May 26, 2011: My internship at Mapleton Junior High ended.

Here are a few pictures from my internship.  I wish I would have taken a lot more pictures of class activities that we had, but I wasn't really sure about the regulations for taking pictures of students.  So, mostly I just took pictures while they weren't there.  :)  Anyway, this is just a very small glimpse into the events of the year.

This was the motto for the school where I did my internship.

I felt so official when my name went up outside the room.

Empty classroom before school started.

Bringing in some of my books.

Trying to get things organized.

Classroom library semi-organized.

Close-up of tree Mike and I made for my classroom.

Fall version of tree.

Over the summer I got some books donated from donorschoose.org, and I had to put together a thank-you package with photos that show how the donations were put to use.  So, since I didn't have pictures of the students, I took some screenshots from one of my observation videos.  :)  So, here is one of my students reading.

One of my students reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

This is how my students decorated our door for Red Ribbon Week.  My class won  the "Most Clever" award and $30 for a class party.  :)

Close-up on the artwork.  :)

The theme for the year was influence, and each term we had an "essential question" relating to our projects for the unit.  "How are we influenced by others?" "How are we influenced by ideas?" "How are we influenced by the past?" and "How can we influence others?"

The colors on the wall were part of a project we did while reading The Giver.  The  black and white posters represent Jonas' society, and the colors outside represent the memories he starts to receive about all of the diversity that there used to be/could be in the world outside.

Covered up colorful calendar I had underneath.

Covered up previous classroom rules about respect.

More authoritarian version of our normal classroom rules to imitate the strict rules in Jonas' society.

Students wrote concrete and abstract associations they have with all of the colors for a group activity and then I cut up the papers to put them on the wall.

A few more examples.

These are from a project we did while reading The Devil's Arithmetic.  Students  learned about the  meaning of their names and then made rip-art projects that would visually symbolize their name's meaning.

One of the choices for book projects, a "book float" that represents the elements of fiction in their  individual reading books.  One of the main purposes of this assignment was to help promote and share the books they read with their classrooms.

Some more examples.

Good old book mobiles!

Kind of a crazy display I made at the beginning of year.

A couple of my students decorated my room with a few Jimmer Fredette signs as a "random act of kindness" they were supposed to do for someone when we were reading Stargirl as a class.  :)

Classroom at the end of the year.

Farewell shot of my door.

Good-bye class!  Bittersweet memories!

January 1, 2011: 2010 ended and 2011 happened.

Just a few pictures to mark the occasion.

A political rant/rave

Read at your own risk.....

I am highly opinionated about politics; I sometimes avoid discussing political issues in public-type forums for that reason. Many people I respect in other matters have completely opposite views from me, so I don't want to create conflict. However, I can't resist expressing my delight with this "official statement" about immigration from the LDS church (my emphasis added):

Around the world, debate on the immigration question has become intense. That is especially so in the United States. Most Americans agree that the federal government of the United States should secure its borders and sharply reduce or eliminate the flow of undocumented immigrants. Unchecked and unregulated, such a flow may destabilize society and ultimately become unsustainable.

As a matter of policy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discourages its members from entering any country without legal documentation, and from deliberately overstaying legal travel visas.

What to do with the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now residing in various states within the United States is the biggest challenge in the immigration debate. The bedrock moral issue for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is how we treat each other as children of God.

The history of mass expulsion or mistreatment of individuals or families is cause for concern especially where race, culture, or religion are involved. This should give pause to any policy that contemplates targeting any one group, particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage.

As those on all sides of the immigration debate in the United States have noted, this issue is one that must ultimately be resolved by the federal government.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is concerned that any state legislation that only contains enforcement provisions is likely to fall short of the high moral standard of treating each other as children of God.

The Church supports an approach where undocumented immigrants are allowed to square themselves with the law and continue to work without this necessarily leading to citizenship.

In furtherance of needed immigration reform in the United States, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports a balanced and civil approach to a challenging problem, fully consistent with its tradition of compassion, its reverence for family, and its commitment to law.

I think this statement is so appropriate in light of the callous remarks and attitudes that I have seen and heard expressed by so many in my community/social circle. For example, many people express pure OUTRAGE that some small portion of their tax dollars might go to providing education, health care, or basic life necessities to... gasp... ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS! Yet, many of these same people believe in a gospel that states the second most important commandment is to love thy neighbor as thyself. Could it be possible that even illegal immigrants might qualify as one's "neighbor" using Christ's definition? Didn't Jesus say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Could the least of these also be illegal immigrants?

I'm not saying that I necessarily support illegal immigration. Rather, I am opposed to the entitled attitude of American citizens who think that just because they happened to be born in this country, or their great-great-great-grandparents "immigrated legally," that their family deserves to have a good quality of life while billions of people in this world do not.

Throughout history, societies in crisis have looked for scapegoats for their problems (e.g. Jews after WWI). Clearly, the United States is in the midst of a financial crisis, and many people would like to assign blame for this outside of themselves and to the "other"--namely, Hispanics. Partially because the idea of subsidizing the other's lifestyle (charity?) enrages them, but also, I believe, partially because of fear of anyone who is different from themselves. Thus, the push for "English only" laws, etc. This blind hatred is the antithesis of the values that should be espoused in our beautiful country.


"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

My mind is officially BLOWN!

Dear ladies and gentlemen (readers of this blog):

As stated in the title above, my mind is officially blown right now. Today I finished my last day as an English teacher/intern at Mapleton Junior High. I have so many mixed emotions going through my mind right now. Let's make a list:
1. Confusion - What? Is this really happening?
2. Excitement - Yes! Finally, after about seven years of non-stop stress and work, I am going to party it up this summer with no major commitments to anything in particular!
3. Sorrow - I've kinda cried a bit about how I am probably never going to see my students again... I'm going to miss those "little demons." Also, I am really going to miss some of my amazing co-workers. Not to mention the security of having a job in general. Which brings me to number 4...
4. Terror - I have no idea what I am doing to do next year. Which is a circumstance I really hate to be in. I've been looking into a lot of different options, but nothing has worked out so far. Hopefully I'll have some more luck over the summer.
5. Giddy exhaustion and relief - This is my main emotion at present. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I can now resume all of my former antics (such as posting on this forgotten blog).

Well, reader, this concludes my list for the day. I am now off to prepare to attend my little sister's high school graduation, in which she will be speaking. Wow! What a smarty-pants. I am pretty much really envious of my sister and all of her accomplishments, FYI. Anyhow, now that I have 100x more free time on my hands, I will probably be posting again shortly. Thanks for reading!

The Two-Step Plan to Becoming One of My Favorite People!

So, Bing is doing a promotion right now where they are giving away $3 giving cards for public school projects. If you go to this website and put in your email they will send you a $3 gift card for a site called Donorschoose.

Then, if you go to the Donorschoose website and find my project , you can give $3 towards helping me get some awesome new books for my students. You just put in the donation code that Bing sent you in the checkout. Thanks for your support!

Summa, Summa, Summatime

So,we've come to about the midway point of summer break now, and I am starting to FREAK OUT! I am going to be a "real" teacher in just two months--what!?! Fortunately or unfortunately, we have a lot going on to keep me distracted and make the time fly by.

First, I am volunteering with the migrant summer school program at Springville Junior High. It has been a blast! I felt totally intimidated the first couple days, but now I am getting into the hang of it and I have been learning a lot about teaching literacy and language development. For the first few weeks we have been learning about mummies. I have actually learned a lot... probably more than I want to know about the subject. In relation to that, we have also been teaching the kids about how to make inferences and use evidence to come to conclusions. I am going to be posting more specific things about my summer school lessons on my teacher blog. After the mummy unit, I have to plan a 5 day unit and I am getting pretty excited about it...

Mike is enjoying his internship at Eli Kirk. It has been fun for him to work for a company with "real" clients instead of just the in-house work he was doing at BYU Viscom for the conferences and workshops. It has also been keeping him busy at work--which is a very good thing.

Whenever Mike isn't at work, he has been spending his time watching the World Cup. He is pretty obsessed. We don't have cable, and he was considering ordering it just for a month so he could watch all the games. However, he found out that he can get most of the games through Spanish channels like Univision for free. Unfortunately, the signal doesn't come through very clear for us, so he has gone crazy buying all sorts of digital antennas and trying to find which ones work best... then taking them back to the store and exchanging them for new in a never-ending cycle. Our TV room/office has cords going everywhere right now. It is driving me nuts, but luckily it will all be over in a month. :) I will admit it is kind of fun watching some of the games, go USA!

Well, that's all for now--Happy Father's Day weekend to everyone!

P.S. Mike never actually went out in public with the mustache from our last post, for anyone who may have been concerned. Of course, he did put it as his profile picture on facebook which is pretty much just as bad. SIGH! :)

Leave it or shave it...

For some weird reason my wife doesn't like my facial hair. Well, I decided not to shave for 5 weeks to see what happens. The result was a constant (about 1000000x a day) reminder to shave. So, pretty much the only reason I ended up shaving was because I have to go to BYU tomorrow (for some weird reason they don't like facial hair either).

I wanted to go back in time and remember the couple of months after my mission that I grew a goatee.

Fear the mustache! Now the question is: leave it or shave it... we'll see! (for some weirder reason BYU does like mustaches)