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| The Wonderful World of Dancing Red Shoes... | ||||||||||||||||||||
Life
as a teacher. |
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I had intended to challenge them but they had other ideas. Hence the graffiti on the wall... |
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Teaching is a relationship. I loved being challenged by my students. Some of my favorite activities turned out to be the result of little ingenuity and lots of desperation staying one step ahead of them. ((grins)) When you have 25+ intelligent 7th & 8th graders who get bored soooo quickly - What do you do? Create in spite circumstance:o) I reentered the public teaching field after having taught staff how to integrate technology into their curriculum for three years and contracting the Webmaster position. I thought I was prepared. Duh?? The thursday before I started teaching, my classes got switched to Technology I, II and Woodshop. HUH? Dad was a Industrial Arts teacher but, I enjoyed the arts of my femininity -skirts, polished nails and ironed attire. I was a computer nerd who roamed the high deserts alone with my camera. OMG, I was petrified. What the heck was I going to do? Rushed out to teaching supply stores buying handouts on mechanical energy, simple machines etc. The Universe provided at Barnes and Nobel's. A humorous book on physics. I could draw the illustrations for fast fives. I dug out my pencil sketch of The Olive Press - a simple wheel and axle machine and I met them at the door with a BIG Smile. Once upon a time long long ago I went to school to be an engineer... While waiting seven weeks on supplies with no books and a ton of old wood, nails and screws what does one do? In my class we... |
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A few links. |
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Designed and build trebuchets and catapults to toss a pumpkin 25 feet. Our first year we got 77 feet. |
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| The following year was a huge success. I had the 7th graders challenge the 8th graders. Our top distance was 170 feet with a 8ft. trebuchet. And the least was 42 feet with a four foot catapult. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| In the Spring we attempted to float our teams body weight then race our Vice Principal across the pool. OOPs. Sorry Phil!!! The following year Mr. Keunnan obliged us with his presence and another fall in the pool. Geeze, the kids can stay on the rafts - what is up guys? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Another favorite project I inherited from Miss Lamb was TLC benches. The key chains were former old metals that we designed by using jewelers saws, grinders, files, and my polisher. Then of course the next project was learning to solder a shank - nickle ring. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Pumpk'n Chunk'n Festival