Just Keep Swimming

Did I ever mention that I love Disney movies? Well...I do!!! Especially the ones they do with Pixar. Man! The stories are fascinating and graphics are phenomenal. Watching the behind-the-scenes portion of the DVD gives the audience a glimpse of the intense thought and process that these guys go through...I mean its just amazing work...but I bet it's also pretty grueling, but I guess the rewards are totally worth it, which brings me to my main point...

I love watching Finding Nemo over and over again. I mean it's just captures your heart. There are several things from that movie that you can totally pick out, but one thing really is stuck in my memory bank forever:"just keep swimming," which was said by Dory, the blue fish who always forgot about everything, but suprisingly, her cognitive skills are sharp enough that she knows her phonics and is able to read! (There goes my teaching skills!..lol.) But anyways, i brought that up to say, it's almost the end of the semester and I just can't wait to relax and do.....absolutely NOTHING! Just relaxing and enjoying being with my family. It has been crazy for the past months and I know things are not gonna get easier, as our professors have said (and we believe them) we just get used to the pain of all the work we have to do...lol...but true. It's such a temptation to just kick back and relax, but I know there's no stopping now. If anything, we should keep pushing for the best, we started strong, we finish strong (that should be ending blog heading for the semester...mental note).

So, even if I want to just let things pass me up again, I'm going to do what Dory said...to just keep swimming.

p.s. Some of my close friends think I'm like Dory many times because my short-term memory is well....really short, and that was even before I was pregnant (which btw, I have been doing all these crazy work for school and I'm 32 weeks pregnant! thats 8 months...crazy! God is good....)

It's finally over...

If you were in the Beginning Student Teaching (BST) program, you would totally understand what I meant by my heading. Just today at 4 PM, everyone in BST submitted their Teaching Performance Assessment Task #2 (TPA). All I could say is, after 33 pages of reading and writing and analyzing (and crying over when is it all gonna be over...) it's finally done. To give you a brief description of TPA, it's basically the application of everything you've learned in class but on paper and submitted to the California Department of Education so you can be a credentialed teacher...it's just one of the gazillion of things we are required to do to be an educator (K-12). Previously, Vanguard was piloting this program. But now, the entire state of California is doing it! Preparing for it and actual doing the TPA was like taking the CBEST or CSET or someother state exam for teaching except that you're not confined in one location for a period of time (that would be a painful experience if it were like that), you get to have a couple of weeks to write it.

All I can say about this is...Thank you, Jesus! Seriously, I thank God for the awesome lectures and learning experiences I have been going through in our cohort, both in our Reading/Literacy class and Curriculum/Methods Class. If it weren't for the professors who designed the program the way it is, I know I couldn't have completed the TPA in an effective way that I thought I did. Not only that, but my husband, my son and my parents and sister, helped out so much in just working around my crazy lifestyle the past few weeks as I've been getting this stuff together...so thank you! I could not have been blessed with a better, more supportive and loving family. Lastly, but most importantly, God is the source of wisdom and strength and being able to complete this task. Without Him, I would not be here. Plus, I learned something so valuable throughout this process, God is a miracle-working God, even in the small (but to me its pretty BIG) details of my life, He is there with us. A simple yet profound truth. I hope that happens to you to. Thank you God, not just for what you do, but for who you are to me.

Great Things Happen in Cohorts...

The way the Vanguard Teacher Credential Program is set up is that students are grouped into Multiple-Subject (Grades K-5 or 6) and Single Subject (Junior High or High School) Teacher Candidate classes, aka cohorts. So within my cohort, there used to be 7 of us, but now we're only 6 (we miss being 7 :( )

Anyway, I love being in my cohort because we learn from each other, we sympathize with each other, we support each other. Its just like a family. (it's funny, I'm currently listening to Group 1 Crew's song Gimme that Funk and then right before I typed the word "family", they just said "we are like family"...lol...total confirmation...). We sure have our rough times (it seems like its been like that lately though...oh well...few more weeks! yey!) but its just good to know that you're not the only one having this cognitive dissonance...side note: we talked about this today in class, that sometimes, its ok to experience cognitive dissonance because that's how we learn, its like being stretched...but in your brain!!! lol...but anyways, as long as we don't stay like that too long, otherwise we become frustrated and give up and not care anymore...much worse...quit!!!

But anyways, I'm blessed and I'm glad that I totally obeyed God's lead in choosing Vanguard for my credential program (even if its far from home). It's not just the great set up of the program, but the faculty and staff and the wonderful cohort we get to work with, which God's Word encourages us to not give up meeting together because that is where we find encouragement:

²³Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. ²⁵Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching....³⁵So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. ³⁶You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. ³⁷For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay. ³⁸But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. ³⁹But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. -Hebrews 10:23-25, 35-39

Here we go, TPA....

If you were in the teaching credential program as a Beginning Student Teacher (BST), TPA can be good or bad. TPA is known as the Teacher Performance Assessment. It's a test mandated by the Department of Education in California. Fortunately for Vanguard, the Graduate Education Program has been piloting this assessment for a few years now so the staff and faculty know how to prepare the teacher candidates, and students have been successfully passing them.

So now, its my time to do it. It's been a struggle for me to start because I have been tossing back and forth what topic I should do the lesson in. However, last Monday, as I was doing homework for another class, God dropped an idea in my mind to do my TPA on a topic I knew quite well. I'm quite fond of Language Arts, though it can be challenging when you're trying to teach it to someone else, but I like it personally. Then, I'm doing the lesson using Concept Attainment (CA) Instructional Strategy, which in the past, when I performed a Lesson using the CA, the students who don't usually perform well did really good on the assessment I conducted together with my lesson.

So, as I embark on this journey to finish the TPA, I was greatly encouraged with Professor Rose's words today in class, and I paraphrase, that God transcends time, he can give you the grace to finish something in 5 minutes that usually takes 3 hours!!!! God, please let that be me!!! I know that's a little silly, but the idea is that time was a man-made instrument in order to communicate to each other and to form some kind of structure to organize our lives. However, God is the God of time. I just need to trust him that he will give me the grace to finish this in time as I do my best, not for the grade, but because I'm obeying his call for my life to be a teacher. It's not easy, but is it worth it? ....Most definitely.

And today God reminded me of the verse we used during my wedding:

¹ There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time..." - Ecclesiastes 3:1,11a

This week during my student teaching, I conducted a guided reading lesson with Master Teacher's class. She assigned me her low group (meaning their considered struggling readers). Because this was my first lesson with Kindergarten, I didn't really know what I was getting into. In the past, I have had experience with kindergartners reading well. So, when I was reading this paperback book, which is part of the basal reading program the school was using, the students were really having a difficult time blending the sounds together. They knew each phonemic sound of every letter, but they were struggling in putting them together. More than that, because the reading was a bit choppy, the comprehension was not through the words they read but through the pictures that were on the page. Here's to say, it was a stretch for me to tackle this lesson. However, it is a wake up call for me because this is the reality of the children in our schools today, especially in low-performing schools. So, in my head I'm trying to go through the different strategies that we learned in our Reading Class (tactile manipulatives, rimes/onsets, associations of sound, more guided reading, some shared or interactive reading). It's kinda frustrating because I feel I should know what to do by now, but the thing is, honestly, I don't (I try, but I'm in that stage of trial and error in applying all the theories) So, in this process of application, I just hold on to God's word:

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Late...late...

I'm serious- procrastination is a deadly epidemic in the college world (being in graduate work does not make any of us exempt from catching this contagious virus). But honestly, being in this credential program, I really have to be on top of things. Its not easy, I'm just keeping the end in mind. Anyway, I wish there was an instant cure for procrastination, but according to another article I read, a habit that was developed throughout the years can't be wiped out overnight by some magical potion. Here's the main thing the author said:

Remember that as you go through this process, you must constantly challenge your cognitive distortions and irrational fears:

• It is not hopeless (few situations are truly hopeless)
• It is not too late (there is always time if you start now)
• You are smart enough (or you wouldn't have made it this far)
• You can't do it later (as you'll just keep putting "later" off until later)
• You will not perform better under pressure (the best work is done when it is well thought-out)

Taken from:http://psychcentral.com/library/procrastinate2.html

Getting Help for Procrastination by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. (January 10, 2005)

All I can do now is to stay focused. Its only 6 weeks left!!! gotta hang in there...

Personality 101

This past week was really busy. I was literally in class every single day!!! Multiple subject teacher candidates usually don't have weekend classes but because I wanted to do both single subject and multiple subject credentials, I had to take this weekend class. Though it may sound like a drag, I really learned a lot from this class. I highly recommend this class for multiple subject people to take this class as well, even if they want to teach lower grades.

In this class, we learned about important study skills that every student must have in order to ready for the next level of education. As one of the strategies for learning, one must know his/her personality. I have a melancholy personality combined with a sanguine personality (one point apart!); these 2 personalities are in total conflict of each other...man that explains why I get so stressed out all the time!!! lol....While we were grouped into our personalities, we had to agree in answering questions like (answers in parenthesis):

"What stresses you?" (disorganization)
"How do you relieve your stress?" (organize & alone time)
"What motivates you?" (accomplishment and appreciation)
"What do you do for fun?" (escape from the usual/routine things-w/c cause stress) The whole class had a great time learning about themselves and others around them. But going back to the strategies, we learned special skills to explicitly teach high-risk and/or low-performing students. Though the lectures were mostly for those teaching junior high and up, I know can use some of those strategies for lower grade levels.

Even on a weekend class, we have to submit a paper (I guess its kinda like a final)...but believe it or not...I'm actually looking forward to doing it because I get to practice the strategies I learned and work with a student that is struggling with school. Hope that what I'll do will really make a difference in this student's life. I mean, that's what its all about anyways right?

Kindergarten Craze

This past week I started going to a different school for my student teaching. Now, I'm in kindergarten!!! I know its sounds crazy but it can be pretty fun. On my first day, I met the principal, the kindergarten team of teachers and the students in my Master Teacher's class (MT). That day they had an assembly to do the awards for the individual classes. I also learned about the routine schedule that my MT has for her class. At lunch, the kindergarten team of teachers went out to lunch and it was great to just get to know that they get to get together and support each other and bounce ideas off of each other to adapt instruction with the students they are having difficulty with. My MT and I also talked about a lesson I'm supposed to be doing the following week. Its a guided reading lesson on a basal reading text. Lastly, after school the kindergarten teacher team with the principal discussed specific children with behavioral issues. The principal stressed the fact that kids should not be labeled; teachers must be creative to find adaptations for the students.

For a first day in a new school, this was quite a bit to experience, but it was a great way to learn. I know the move from third grade is a quite a change for me but I'm hoping that I'll learn to love these kindergarten students as much as I did the third grade. This is actually good for me because I get to know how to prepare my son for when he goes to school. So, I gotta do the lesson plan now...hope the kids and I will both learn from each other.