Artist Of The Week

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Well, I guess we can’t do an ongoing blues music feature without including Robert Johnson – our artist of the week.

This is where (arguably) rock and roll legend was born. How did this guy get so good in (reportedly) just under a year? Simple: Head down Clarksdale, find a (the) crossroads, hand your guitar over to a sketchy looking fellow who re-tunes it to (I think) open G, hand over your soul through a blood contract, and boom! Lou’s your uncle.

Charley Patton and Son House had a hard time shaking this guy who hung around with them like a lost dog, played and sang so bad that they laughed themselves to tears, and just couldn’t take a hint.

THEN…… he disappears for a while, shows up out of the blue with a talent and voice that make the aforementioned 2 blues masters roll their jaws back up off the floor, and says a whole lot of nothing about the whole thing. Then as quickly as he came, he went – either poisoned by a jealous girl, or alone in a hotel from syphilis – depends which source you reference.

Anyway, he left us 29 masterpieces of torture, love, regret, terror, and humour, and for that I am grateful. Hope you are at peace Robert. Peace out…

Key tracks:

Crossroad Blues

Hellhound  On My Trail

Kind Hearted Woman

Preaching’ Blues (my personal favourite)

Best served with: Mortise and Tenon – simple, solid, and ancient

and… a cross, bible, ankh: Some type of protective charm

PRACTICUM wk. 2 (Stand & Deliver)

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Lot’s of in-the-trench action happening this week:

Over the weekend, I was able to co-ordinate some observations with my FA, design a few lesson plans, and spend a bit of time reflecting on what I had seen in the classes; I need to decide what level of complexity I will choose regarding the 6/7, and 8/9 mixed classes.

Foods: The week was well timed with the start of the 2nd term 6/7 foods classes on Monday. It was nice to be in the class from the first day, and establish credibility as a resident instructor, rather than “that guy” who just appeared at the front of the demo table without warning. My first full lesson plan was delivered on Monday with a knife skills/vegetable and dip lab, and for the most part it went okay. As it happened, I was able to do this lesson again on Tuesday in front of my FA and both SA’s, with some of the problems corrected, and familiarity of the room working to my advantage. The demo and lab went well, and I even invited my FA to judge the dishes and design presentation after – he seemed to enjoy it and offered some valuable critique and feedback after the lesson. He is a very supportive mentor, and I believe I will learn a lot from him during the long practicum.

I received some first hand experience with difficult students as well during these labs – 1 being off his meds. This young man was in constant motion all of the time, and my FA had him pegged within the first 5 minutes of the lab. I had to pull him aside 3 times in the 75 minutes, but my approach was kind and calm (down on 1 knee at his eye level, spaced a good 60 cm. away), and he admitted to me that he was off meds and having a very difficult time staying calm. I thanked him for his honesty, and I think he tried extra hard at the end because we made a good connection; lot’s to be learned (by me) from this one.

There is a young girl in the room that is quite perplexing as well. I have her in 3 classes (junior woods and makerspace as well), and have tried on several occasions to connect with her:

  1. Tried to show her some simple hand saw techniques in woods. She did let me show her how to get a cut safely started, but was not very open to some simple technique which would have made her task much simpler.

2. Tried to get her to participate in a short scavenger hunt in the Home Ec lab, basically naming and placing the the items at each station, she just crossed her arms and shook her head silently when I tried to prompt and/or help her get started. I decided to leave her be on this one.

3. A bit of a breakthrough – I could not find her a pencil for sketching in makerspace, so I leant her my own “personal” pencil. She was very respectful and returned it at the end of the class. Following this she seemed much more relaxed and open to talk. Hopefully this carries through to my next visit. Funny how the small and seemingly meaningless gestures carry weight for certain individuals……

Community Connections: I started off this week with a safety demo on metal work equipment in the makerspace. I went over safety, setup, and operation for the hand grinder, metal chop saw, horizontal band saw, and mig welder. First off, 60 minutes of safety demo is waaaaay too long for these kids. I had the whole class in for this one, and was down to about half who were actually paying any degree of attention by the time we got to the mig welder. Some of the kids knew, or at least thought they knew, all of the safety protocols and just chose to ignore them, so my best chance next term is to get them on safety fresh off the bat, strongly enforcing the rules as we go along. On a good note, as only one person could work on the go-cart at any given time, I was able to get the rest of them wiring up breadboards with LED’s -something that they themselves initiated no less! I know these kids want to learn, it’s just a question of what and how. We appointed a few of the kids group leaders, so there job is to lead by example and enforce the safety rules. Hopefully this doesn’t fall apart in my absence.

Woods 6/7: I was finally able to hook up with the junior woods teacher this week and meet the younger crew. I am very excited about teaching this group, as it falls in with my philosophy of solid foundation training to ensure creativity and success in advanced levels of ADST. The teacher here, Mr. Williams, is a well liked and soft spoken guy, so I hope to expand and improve upon his method when I “take over” the class next February.

PRACTICUM! (at last) – Week 1

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Lake Trail Middle School, district 71 – grades 6-9

Well, first week is down, and I think it went quite well. Here is a little recap:

Arriving at the school, I had yet to find out who my SA (‘s) was (were). Travis and I went to our FA’s home on Sunday for a meet and greet, but he likewise had no info on that front. I met the VP Zale Darnel, and we had a great chat about the school and recent developments therein, before being joined by the FA Craig Basset.  The remainder of that morning was a little tour and getting some scheduling issues out of the way.

Schedule: Wow, what a convoluted maze the schedule at this school is. It literally took Zale 3 tries to help me understand the 6-7/8-9 flip, linear/semester/quarter system that they run on, partially due to (I think) the recent inclusion of grade 6 to the school. It makes perfect sense after the fact, but seems to be a little inside joke within the entire district (the schedule, not the school).

First class: WOOD SHOP! Perfect way to start the day. I attended wood shop with Zale’s 8-9 class, and they were a very interesting bunch! The full spectrum was realized here, from the hyper overachiever to the excuse laden slacker who can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to losing his entire binder of “work”. It was a fun class though, and it felt great to get back into the sights, sounds, and smells of the shop with some cutting, drilling, and turning projects. The class was pretty relaxed, and several students came up to me for assistance which I was very pleased to offer. I was also happy to hear that this would be one of my blocks in the long practicum. Great start!

Nancy Lawrence: My second SA, Nancy, was an excellent, patient, and informative advisor. I spent several classes with her during the week, mostly in foods 6-7, which is a fun, if a little loud, class. I think this one is going to be a real exercise in classroom management. The kids are willing and eager, but there are a couple of loose canon’s who are very effective at toppling the entire rhythm of the class (hard to tell if they take pride in this, or are completely unaware. Ms. Lawrence had also partially lost her voice the day before, so was struggling extra hard to hold attention. The kids are pretty good with her for the most part. I spent quite bit of time with this class, but unfortunately will not teach it in the long practicum (can’t have everything). The foods class I will be teaching with Ms. Lawrence is a new one that we get to co-develop: Cooking with fire (8-9). I anticipate lots of fun with this one, but very heavy front loading on the prep.

Makerspace: Another long practicum block I’ll be co-teaching with the art teacher Mr. Trembley. Not a bad space, huge, with 2 migs, a 3d printer, several M-bots, and a slew of breadboards, components,and what have you. They also have a vinyl cutter which was a very popular item during the week. The mood in here is very relaxed and self paced, with very little interjection by the teachers. I had a bit of a hard time with this one as I’m not used to such a Laissez-Faire approach, but will tailor it to suit our needs in February. We are going to offer up themes to choose from, likely metal, electronics, and some ornaments or wood and art, having the kids keep a portfolio and or visual record of their progress. I will be co-ordinating with Mr. Trembley over the next few weeks, deciding on what amount of teacher guidance will be needed to keep this from lapsing into a do-nothing chill-out period for the inhabitants.

Community Connections: There are quite a few kids in the school who are obviously compromised somewhere, somehow in the home environment. I only receive bits and pieces of the info here, but did work with a large group of them in a “Community Connections” class that happens on the Friday flex/core day at Lake Trail. My day with them was a bit overwhelming, we had a T.O.C. that had some experience with the group, and another EA who told me right away to watch out for one of the kids – he was kicked out before we even finished attendance for telling the T.O.C. to F-off. Half of the group is working on welding up a go-cart frame, so I was charged with supervising them, and the other half went to the gym with the T.O.C. I spent the morning in Makerspace with my half, and found them to be very talented individuals. Their group was a little hard to break in to, but by the end they were asking some questions, getting some grinding and cutting done on the frame, and generally engaged quite well. Having said this, I could see glimpses of the volatile personalities, and will have to spend some time researching pedagogy on teaching high risk youth. This class closed out week 1, and gave me a lot to think about over the weekend.

Initial inquiry proposal (450B)

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After much introspective deliberation, I have decided:

How do we objectively assess all aspects of student work?

I have decided to base the inquiry on the following 3 elements:

  1. Objective assessment of a students understanding and application of the design process
  2. Objective assessment of a students physically manufactured product (equity vs equality)
  3. Assessment of a students social/emotional development.

Cultural differences in students, their individual habitus (and age), and how ingrained the culture is will be important factors in SEL in the classroom. How do you foster a preservation of the culture while simultaneously fostering a sense of belonging in the new culture? Integrating non-english speaking parents into the students assessment process is also of primary importance.

I have spoken with several instructors regarding their assessment protocols, and the common thread seems to be the student portfolio as a gauge of progress in the design process.

I also believe the idea of empathy; how it’s defined, and how we must use it to understand each other (specifically marginalized groups like Indigenous students and Sogi) will be an ongoing challenge within the classroom.

It’s a bit of a broad topic, but something I will always need and would like to be very proficient at. Maybe get on the curriculum writing team? (ha ha, a bit early in the game for that). I will continue to update the post with my findings as I go along, should anyone be interested, and look forward to practicum this week to get some real world insight into how the instructors have began to integrate these new methods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pecha Kucha Extraordinarus

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Pecha Kucha

For those of you who are not familiar with this method, it’s a presentation format that involves 20 slides (powerpoint usually) delivered sequentially, with 20 seconds allowed per. The idea, I believe is to cut the fluff out of your presentations and get succinct points over in the allowed audible whitespace. Okay, I was pretty hesitant about the whole idea as I have developed my whole teaching pedagogy around not having a class full of students locked on me for 6 odd minutes while I deliver banking style wisdom to fill their empty cups. But, it wasn’t so bad after all; though 6 minutes is an eternity from the presenters point of view, staying on point makes it sail quite quickly from the audience point of view. My sage advice on the topic:

  1. Don’t wing it – You have to be pretty skilled to seamlessly pull this off without, at the very least, 1 or 2 dry runs in front of a mirror or other reflective device.

2. Know your topic – Obvious, yes, but if you haven’t completed step 1, this could potentially save you from running out of the room crying.

3. Don’t focus on your weaknesses – Although not everyone will agree with me on this point, a presentation in this format is all about confidence, so wear comfortable shoes and play to your strengths…whatever they may be.

4. Don’t have 7 cups of coffee immediately before – Enough said.

Will I use this presentation format in the future? Possibly. I can see the attention grabbing value, and it is short and succinct enough to hold even the most attentively challenged of us for 6 and 40, provided you don’t have a voice like snufalufagas.

Quick summary:

Hook potential – high

content density – moderate

power point busy-ness factor – low

 

Stay tuned with bated breath for my review of PK #2

Tupper Tech

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The cohort (or most of it anyway) took a little field trip down to Tupper Secondary this morning. If you are dying to know how this went down, stay tuned for another exhilarating post in The Long and Dusty Road…..

Tupper Tech was an interesting experience. I think what grabbed me the most was Mr. Evans treatment of the whole shop as a job preparation course, including punch in, shop culture and respect, and my personal favourite – Behaviour modification.

I got the impression that many of my cohort felt Mr. Evans a bit dated in his beliefs and methods, but I think he nailed it in terms of prepping the grade 12 students for their very jarring entry into the real world. Granted, it may not be as unforgiving as he makes it sound, but a little overtraining is still preferential to under training in terms of overall prepared-ness. He seems to focus a lot on an area I think is very underdeveloped in students: The ability to take criticism. When delivered correctly, criticism need not be viewed as nit picking or minutia, as long as the critic is trained and knows how to deliver. I was once told by a friend who was in a near fatal accident “I learned everything I needed to know when I stopped talking and started listening”. There is a lot to that statement, and I have taken it to heart and practice ever since.

Mr. Evans aso stated the importance of not burning bridges, for example: If you get fired of your own accord, learn from the experience. Come back to your ex-employer, shake his hand, and ask for an exit interview to help you improve. This could very well turn an impression 180 degrees in the employers eyes, and maybe get you a recommendation or reference down the road – if you are willing to listen.

The ITA also provided valuable information at Tupper, and I hope they will be a valued partner and resource to me when I begin my teaching career next year.

Artista della settimana

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So this week, the spotlight is on R.L. Burnside, or Rule, or simply R, depending what section of the world you’re in. This guy was the last of the real deal, farmer by trade, Hill Country Bluesman the rest of the time. He was a late bloomer for sure, playing off and on through the ’60’s and ’70’s before really hitting his stride in the ’80’s. This guy wasn’t afraid of anything, and in the early part of the decade even hooked up with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and introduced scratch, loops, and electronica into his music. I guess its pretty obvious he is one of my all time favourites, and I miss him dearly (passed away in 2005).

If I were to pose the question: “How many chords do you need for an amazing tune?” If you’re into Jazz, maybe 16, rock, 3-8, blues, just 3, but Hill Country?? 1 MY FRIEND, just 1. Don’t believe me? check out “Jumper On The Line”, and prepare to be corrected!!

Key tracks: just about any, but to narrow just a bit:

Goin’ Down South

Just Like a Woman

Jumper On The Line

Snakedrive

and the list goes on……

Best served with: Something rough, beautiful, and simple: An art metal abstract in dirty copper…..

….and a cold cold beer, with a smile – just like R.L.’s

Whoops, spoke too soon

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Okay, so I guess you’re going to have good days and bad days, yesterday was the latter. I think I did a bit too much in-head self glorification coming off a couple of good presentations, the crash was imminent.

Oh well, lesson learned, time to move on to Pecha Kucha. So this standing in front of a room full of academics has always been a bit of an issue for me, and trying to pull it off without crib notes is a whole new level of difficulty my mind, so how am I going to overcome this? Apparently, through repetition and practice. If I wasn’t down to 4 hours of sleep a night I would consider toastmasters, but I think that may have to be a spring/summer endeavor.

Other than that, things are pretty good. I know more about Bordieu than the average Joe, have a decent handle on protective factors of resiliency, and have a framework in my head of “how I’m going to pull in that distant loner kid in the back row whom I’ve never heard speak, and turn them into an engaged, functioning pillar of future society”.

By the way, this is a free form blog, so I only correct horrendous errors in grammar and spelling (don’t want to interrupt the stream of conciousness for such triviality – sorry English cohort).

In other engaging news: Entering week 18 with no running water. Actually, the only things running are my friends when they see me coming with “favour please” virtually tattooed on my forehead, and my nose this week as we enter cold season (when exactly is that?). My new National guitar! Wow, so shiny and clean, and buzzing on the saddle somewhere!? Yes, have to rip my baby apart and sleuth out the source of this audible atrocity – its totally messing up my flow and I need the sanity blanket it provides. On that note, please see my artist of the week section on R.L. Burnside. This guy’s gonna knock your socks off!

 

Breaking news: As of Saturday, Oct. 21, we have running water! Please friends, don’t ever take for granted the priveledge and joy of turning a tap, and having something (preferably clear) come out. We have it good here.

 

Theory to Practice

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Theory to Practice

 An eye opening visit to Fraser Heights secondary

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Fraser Heights Secondary for some insight filled observations on teachers, lesson delivery methods, and new curriculum integration. I have to say, these people are really on the cutting edge as far as I’ve seen.

Joe, one of the Home Ec. teachers, who was also involved in writing the new curriculum assessment drafts, gave us a full day guided tour of the Home Ec. labs, Maker space, Robotics class, and wood and metal shops. I met some excellent and insightful teachers there, and had what I feel is my first real practical experience with the theories I’ve been studying at UBC so far.

Joe tells me they have been utilizing inquiry based learning for several years already, and some of the activities I saw in the classes/labs were quite impressive. Students design their own dishes, attach a personal and/or cultural significance to them, back up their choices with personal or cultural context, and requisition the raw ingredients which are purchased by the department. Then, of course, they make it. One of the students was even working on an entire semester curriculum style design for foods 11 – impressive indeed!

I was curious to hear where the assessment criteria was going in the new curriculum, and Joe gave myself and Akina (from my Home Ec. cohort) a very detailed description of how they were assessing the inquiry based units. I have to admit, a lot of it was over my head as we have not investigated this quadrant of teaching yet, but I did garner the fact that the evolution of the students progress within their process was the guiding parameter.

Joe opened up his lesson plans, unit plans, and classrooms, giving us a chance to interact with students from grade 8 to 11, talk to them about their aspirations and experiences, and field a lot of questions about life in UBC!

As I mentioned, I also poked my head into the VEX robotics class, spent some time with the metals teacher, and got ta chance to speak with a 10 year career TOC (who is also an opera singer). A whole different take on teaching from her as you can imagine.

Sooooo, a big shout out to that school and the above mentioned departments for making my visit a memorable one, passing us some business cards for networking, and generally making the day enjoyable and educational. Hope I cross paths with them again in the near future.

Artist du la semaine

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This week’s artist is none other than the great Blind Willie Johnson. A fire and brimstone preacher with a voice that is equal parts scary and soulful. Aside form the signature “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” (yep, its on voyager’s golden record), “Motherless Children Have a Hard Time” is guaranteed to send shivers up your spine, unless you got a hole in your soul (Burnside, 1979 – more on him later). I drift off to sleep exhausted after a hard day at UBC more often to this artist, then all others combined. Spin this, sit back, and get carried away to a street corner somewhere in Beaumont, sometime in the 30’s…….

Key tracks:

Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

Motherless Children Have a Hard Time

God Moves on the Water

 

Best served with:

Something old simple and beautiful  – Dovetail joint

Whiskey…neat