Busy Saturday

Started my day with a PD workshop on wellness and interviewing skills. I was able to learn quite a bit from both topics. The interview workshop really reminded me that I need to get ready for the upcoming months! In other words... get a finalized Education-type Resume ready!

After PD, I ended up going to Market Mall to see if I could pick up an item... unfortunately they were sold out. =(

After Market, I went to Canadian Tire to pick up some paint thinners/stripers for a friend. The parking lot was quite busy today. I had to park all the way at the end of the parking lot. The store itself had a large amount of customers, more than what I'm used to seeing. I guess Christmas is around the corner, or people were going due to a one day sales event.

After delivering the cans, I talked with my friend as he worked on his project. I guess I could have helped, but I didn't want my hands to get dirty. =P

Soon, it was off to lunch (at around 3) since I didn't had a chance to eat. I had a bowl of pho at Pho Ha which was as tasty as always! Next was another trip down to Canadian Tire to grab some other equipment for my friend's project.

Finally, I went to go wash my car, since it looked like it changed colors during the previous week. There was a bit of a line up at the place where I usually get my car washed.

When I got home, I was too tired to get any work done, so I just surfed the net and played games...

Tomorrow is another day! (I really need to stop procrastinating so much...)

Also for tomorrow, I'll bring back a blog topic that I had used in the past.

And I need to get a picture for the week's theme... hunger...

I'm already a day late...

AH, disconnected thoughts....

SLEEP!

All You Can Eat BBQ at Seoul

This week, I got to pick the location for Bro Night. Since I never had the chance to go try Seoul's AYCE menu (which apparently they added quite recently) I wanted to go give it a try!

To me, it sounded too good to be true... All you can eat meat for $25 bucks? Well well well... I found out the hard way that it wasn't Reah that sweet of a deal.

The meat dishes were good; we had pretty much everything on their menu besides the pork bellies. However, we could only go for three rounds. For $30 per person, including taxes and tips, it didn't seem like we got the most bang for our buck.

Overall, it was a good experience but it'll be something that I will not be doing for a long long time. I never thought that I would grow tired of eating meat...

No picture since I was eating with my hands.

Week 1 Day 4

This week is almost over! That is crazy!!

Today, we got to teach our Biol 30 lesson. We didn't get through everything we planned to, but that's okay! (We were a little bit ambitious in terms of getting through everything).

I went over the DNA replication part, but I guess it was still confusing for students. After their quiz tomorrow, I'm going to review the process by starting with a video. I hope that this will help them understand it in greater detail!

Now back to some small planning and sleep! School is tiring, but I'm starting to get used to it again! =)

Day Three already??

It's hard to believe that day three has ended! Even though we just started practicum recently, it seems like its going by so fast! Today, my learning partner teacher and I got the chance to teach a bit in Chem 20. We both had lessons prepared for teaching pH and hydronium concentrations. She taught the first Chem 20 class while I taught the second Chem 20 class. It went alright, but I realized that there were quite a bit of things that I thought made my lesson less than ideal. As my partner teacher reminded us, we should not only look for things to improve, but also things that was done well.

As in getting my students' names... well I think I got the Chem 20 class I taught today down pat. There's two more classes of names to learn!

As for tomorrow, my learning partner teacher and I will be teaching the entire Biol 30 class! We're going to discuss the structure of DNA and DNA replication. Also, she came up with a brilliant activity for students to take part in after the lesson tomorrow!

Here's a pic of some of the materials that will be needed for the material tomorrow:

A picture of paper plates =P I'll post a picture of the results from the activity tomorrow... if I remember

Week 1 Day 2

I woke up a bit later than I expected. I planned to arrive at 7:30 today, but I ended up arriving at around 7:50... when school pretty much starts.

Yikes!

Fortunately for me, my partner teacher has a prep first thing in the morning. At FFCA, the schedules for the high school students are the same every day (except for 3 credit courses). That's an interesting system, and I can see the benefits in using that particular system. However, I don't think I'll be able to tolerate it as a student =/.

My learning partner and I spent the prep and a good chunk of block 2 (Biol 30) to come up with a lesson plan on calculating pH and hydronium concentrations. It was an interesting experience to come up with a lesson plan together, for it gave us the chance to go over concepts and correct one another if we had any misunderstandings about certain topics. It also helped me, at least, in terms of expanding a lesson with visuals that I wouldn't have thought of using, or any other teaching techniques.

I'll try to remember to implement some techniques tomorrow!

After lunch, we watched our partner teacher teach the two chemistry classes. It's amazing how both classes are on the same track! No one class is ahead/behind the other class.

After school, my partner teacher led me to the drama/music teacher's room since I was inquiring whether I could join the school's musical since they were looking for a piano player. It would be a good experience for me since I never really had a chance to play a large part in a musical. Also, it would be a good extra curricular activity for my practicum experience! =)

My car is so dirty. =( That's the trouble when you park on the street with all that slush on the ground!

Semester Three Practicum: Week 1 Day 1

I arrived bright and early at FFCA. After handing in my police check to the office, the secretary called my partner teacher to come pick me up. This was something new to me, since for the last two practicums, we were told to wait in a conference room to be debriefed by the school liaison or principal before we started our practicum. It was pretty much to the get go in this one! I didn't mind though since my partner teacher filled me in about everything I probably needed to know for the next month.

Very soon after, my partner learning teacher arrived. In this semester, most of us (I'm assuming most) were working in pairs to team teach. I'm very fortunate since my partner learning teacher (or whatever the handbook calls your partner student teacher) is quite intelligent and gifted in engaging classes from what I could tell when we had specialization together. 

After she arrived, we had a little tour around the school, since I wasn't able to meet up with my partner teacher during the school year. For an old junior high school, I thought it was pretty big! It was definitely  much bigger than my junior high school. Once the tour was over, my partner teacher printed us notes for the three classes that he (and eventually we will be) was teaching. As a little challenge for ourselves, we went to see if we could locate the copier/work room. We had no trouble finding the room, but the documents weren't received by the printer! The school was having a network issue apparently today. =/

After we got our notes, it was time for class. The first class was Biol 30. The classroom layout had desks arranged in groups of 4 (some 5). Since some groups had vacant spots, we each took a group and sat down with the students. I had to say that it was definitely different than when I sat with my 8C group back in my old practicum. The reason being was that most of them male students were at the same height or taller than me (and I'm about 5'7-5'8ish). We went over a quiz and discussed a bit about mitosis and meiosis. Once that topic was covered, we started chromosomal diseases like Down Syndrome. 

After Biol 30 was lunch. The staff room was pretty sparse, but it made the space more efficient in my opinion. Lunch was about 40 minutes in length but I swear it only seemed like we had 15 minutes to eat!

After lunch was the first Chemistry 20 class. They went over acids and bases, which I had to admit, I had troubles keeping up. I forgotten quite a bit of the material and only remembered once my partner teacher went over the concept. I guess I will need to step up my game and get reviewing on the material! There was another Chem 20 class after the one we observed. The dynamics between the two classes are different in my opinion. It'll be something that I'll investigate further throughout this week!

After class, we had bus supervision, which was pretty fast and straightforward. I think there were 18 busses waiting to pick up students today? It was the most busses I've seen lined up in a row! After bus supervision, we had a quick debrief with our partner teacher. Our first teaching assignment will be on Wednesday where we will go over calculating pH and pOH! I better pull out my MCAT books and restudy the topic! 

And now I'm pooped. I'm always tired after practicum, =P

Long, but very enjoyable days!

A picture of a hand warmer that I had in my jacket. My mom bought me new ones since the old packets I have expire soon. I'm not sure if I mentioned it on my blog before, but I got frostbite about 4 years ago that was severe enough to have caused me to get my toes amputated =(. Luckily, my skin recovered, but since then, I've been suffering from cold feet (literally) when ever the temperature dips below 10 degrees Celsius. I keep hand warmers as a precautionary measure incase I ever get stuck in the cold for extended periods of time.

The Pet Girl of Sakurasou

Today is Remembrance Day, so we observed a minute of silence in karate today. I didn't expect the younger students to be still during that minute, but they were stock still. It seems like though, that each year, Remembrance Day loses its meaning. For example, I am seeing less people wearing poppies and the situation in a school in Edmonton (I believe?) that gave students the choice of whether they wanted to observe a moment of silence in school or not. I myself forgot about the minute of silence today, even though I mentioned it at the beginning of class. I stated that we will observe the minute at exactly 11 AM, but it wasn't till around 11:10 that a student reminded me of what we needed to do.

Lest we forget all those that sacrificed their lives to give us a chance to live in a free country like Canada. 

In the afternoon, I got some work done for my remaining school projects and for my upcoming practicum. I have to say that I feel a bit nervous since I've never been inside a charter school before. It's going to be an interesting experience nevertheless! I just have to remind myself to set my alarm clocks to wake me up early tomorrow morning! 

Also this afternoon, I started a new anime series: The Pet Girl of Sakurasou. I'm about three episodes in, out of five at the moment, and I'm pretty much hooked! Its a nice romantic comedy with a touch of slice of life. I feel like I can relate to the main character, in that he's not quite sure what he wants to do with his life. I do have somewhat of a path in mind, but I feel like it may change when I grow older and experience more events in life. 

Anyways, onto episode 4!