Volunteering, Teacher-Intern, and Exams.
I missed posting last week. I blame it on catching after family stress and general malaise. I did due 500 burpees in three days for the NerdFitness Fall Frenzy challenge though. GO ME! (ow ow ow).
Volunteering in an elementary Butterfly Garden!
Last Saturday I volunteered at a local elementary school and helped prune their butterfly garden and weed the lasagna garden. Manual labor in partial sun aside it was actually really fun. Some of the students were there with their parents and looked totally cute in their orange aprons (from Home Depot). Most of my time was spent in the butterfly garden but we bagged up some seven bags of tall weed grass from the lasagna garden and planted some rosemary, purple basil, spicy oregano, and nine Chinese cabbage sprouts. WEE!
The whole project was a lot of fun. At the end the girls presented the volunteers with green apple pins to thank us for our work on the Green Apple Day of Service! I've tacked it up with my medals and patches. Definitely something I'd like to repeat!
Student-Teacher Interning:
I started my internship at a local elementary school! I'll spend one day a week for eight weeks in a 9th grade Biology classroom. The teacher is super cool and actually completed her internship through the same program I'm in, in the same school! It's her second year of teaching and she has so much insight as to what the first year is like and the changes that she made in her own outlook in order to survive moving into the second year.
For the first day I introduced myself to her classes and just watched. It was really interesting most of the time. The students seemed to like and respect her on the whole. It wasn't smooth all day, there was an attention-seeking student and she handled him firmly but patiently. There was a student who came after school with conflicts between her grades and her extracurricular activities and again the student was helped and went away much happier than she'd come in. I really hope that I can be as patient as all that.
On the whole I look forward to the rest of the semester. I'll actually be there a week longer than my own school semester due to school half days. I'll try to write a little report on each day without conflicting with anyone's privacy.
On a side note, I interview for my regular classroom observation hours this week. WEE!
Exams: 78% Genetics, Unreleased Organic Chem 1.
Last week I took my first Genetics exam and didn't do half as well as I thought I would. I scored a 78%. "Oh, but it's a high C, almost a B!" Yes, but it's NOT a B. The saddest part is knowing exactly where I went wrong and knowing it was 100% preventable. No, not studying "more". The professor posts up practice problems, word problems of course, and I did exactly zero of them. I allowed myself to get "behind" and blamed it on the family stress we've have lately and then when it came time to catch up I burned through the chapters but didn't do any practice. Having knowledge isn't enough, one must apply it properly. I'm on way to to correct that habit for the next exam, which happens to be this upcoming Wednesday.
I'd like to report a happy grade on my first Organic Chemistry exam from last Wednesday but the grades have not been posted. I felt oddly competent coming out of the exam despite someone's phone continuously ringing for the better part of the period. I had a bit of trouble with acid reactions (sigh, I always do, and know better) and with formal charges. The latter is easy when applying a simple formula. Unfortunately the formula I memorized requires the Periodic Table to have the groups labelled in IA-IB fashion, which they usually do. We were not provided a Periodic Table. We have been for every exam in Chem 1 and 2 and I naturally assumed we would be here. Sigh. Still, I feel I did well and am anxious to have the grades posted. Seriously, I check every hour or so.
In the News and Cool Stuff:
I'll keep it short. Honestly I don't want to post a lot of political stuff because as it gets closer to voting day people just get... exciteable. I understand that I can have similar opinions in most things and then disagree in politics. Cest la vie. I will not, however, turn a blind eye when politics interferes with science education. UGH!
House Science Member Says Earth is 9,000 years old By Christine Gorman of Scientific American | October 5, 2012.
Really the title says it all. "The earth is about 9,000 years old, according to U.S. House Representative Paul Broun, who is also a physician and member of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology of the House of Representatives." (cringe) How can we properly defend science education and claim to be a scientifically literate society when we have people on the US House of Reps' Committee on Science, Space, and Tech claiming that they believe the Earth is 9,000 years old!? If you want to have faith in an Almighty, sure, fine, go ahead, but you don't have faith in any of the other mythologies that science has proven quaint and incorrect, why hold on to this one? Your god does NOT want you to elect to be ignorant! Right? I think?
"Green Plastic".
-The Café Near You Might Be Using “Green” Plastic. Is That an Oxymoron? by Joe Fassler
October 2, 2012. These "bioplastics" with a 7 on the bottom don't compost in your regular bin but a lot of composters won't take them because they can contaminate other materials. They apparently don't recycle so they just end up in landfills with the other non-recycled plastics.
BUT
-Bioplastic: The Plastic Wrap That's Good Enough to Eat Sep 25, 2012. This one (not available yet) is made from corn and root starch and is actually edible. If you don't want to eat it, it biodegrades within a year.
I'll leave you with this gorgeous image "Starry Night of Monument Valley" By: Wally Pacholka.
Volunteering in an elementary Butterfly Garden!
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| I'm in the red on the left! Pictures are public on Sequil Systems' Facebook page. This one's everyone in front of the Butterfly Gardens. |
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| Working in the Lasagna Garden. HUGE stack of weeds not shown! |
Student-Teacher Interning:
I started my internship at a local elementary school! I'll spend one day a week for eight weeks in a 9th grade Biology classroom. The teacher is super cool and actually completed her internship through the same program I'm in, in the same school! It's her second year of teaching and she has so much insight as to what the first year is like and the changes that she made in her own outlook in order to survive moving into the second year.
For the first day I introduced myself to her classes and just watched. It was really interesting most of the time. The students seemed to like and respect her on the whole. It wasn't smooth all day, there was an attention-seeking student and she handled him firmly but patiently. There was a student who came after school with conflicts between her grades and her extracurricular activities and again the student was helped and went away much happier than she'd come in. I really hope that I can be as patient as all that.
On the whole I look forward to the rest of the semester. I'll actually be there a week longer than my own school semester due to school half days. I'll try to write a little report on each day without conflicting with anyone's privacy.
On a side note, I interview for my regular classroom observation hours this week. WEE!
Exams: 78% Genetics, Unreleased Organic Chem 1.
Last week I took my first Genetics exam and didn't do half as well as I thought I would. I scored a 78%. "Oh, but it's a high C, almost a B!" Yes, but it's NOT a B. The saddest part is knowing exactly where I went wrong and knowing it was 100% preventable. No, not studying "more". The professor posts up practice problems, word problems of course, and I did exactly zero of them. I allowed myself to get "behind" and blamed it on the family stress we've have lately and then when it came time to catch up I burned through the chapters but didn't do any practice. Having knowledge isn't enough, one must apply it properly. I'm on way to to correct that habit for the next exam, which happens to be this upcoming Wednesday.
I'd like to report a happy grade on my first Organic Chemistry exam from last Wednesday but the grades have not been posted. I felt oddly competent coming out of the exam despite someone's phone continuously ringing for the better part of the period. I had a bit of trouble with acid reactions (sigh, I always do, and know better) and with formal charges. The latter is easy when applying a simple formula. Unfortunately the formula I memorized requires the Periodic Table to have the groups labelled in IA-IB fashion, which they usually do. We were not provided a Periodic Table. We have been for every exam in Chem 1 and 2 and I naturally assumed we would be here. Sigh. Still, I feel I did well and am anxious to have the grades posted. Seriously, I check every hour or so.
In the News and Cool Stuff:
I'll keep it short. Honestly I don't want to post a lot of political stuff because as it gets closer to voting day people just get... exciteable. I understand that I can have similar opinions in most things and then disagree in politics. Cest la vie. I will not, however, turn a blind eye when politics interferes with science education. UGH!
House Science Member Says Earth is 9,000 years old By Christine Gorman of Scientific American | October 5, 2012.
Really the title says it all. "The earth is about 9,000 years old, according to U.S. House Representative Paul Broun, who is also a physician and member of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology of the House of Representatives." (cringe) How can we properly defend science education and claim to be a scientifically literate society when we have people on the US House of Reps' Committee on Science, Space, and Tech claiming that they believe the Earth is 9,000 years old!? If you want to have faith in an Almighty, sure, fine, go ahead, but you don't have faith in any of the other mythologies that science has proven quaint and incorrect, why hold on to this one? Your god does NOT want you to elect to be ignorant! Right? I think?
"Green Plastic".
-The Café Near You Might Be Using “Green” Plastic. Is That an Oxymoron? by Joe Fassler
October 2, 2012. These "bioplastics" with a 7 on the bottom don't compost in your regular bin but a lot of composters won't take them because they can contaminate other materials. They apparently don't recycle so they just end up in landfills with the other non-recycled plastics.
BUT
-Bioplastic: The Plastic Wrap That's Good Enough to Eat Sep 25, 2012. This one (not available yet) is made from corn and root starch and is actually edible. If you don't want to eat it, it biodegrades within a year.
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| My general view of politics, snagged from FB, who stole it from who knows where. |
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