Wow.

That’s all I can say.

Why?

Because today was a BLUR!

“Today” started for me about seventeen hours ago, yes youheard me, SEVENTEEN hours!  I woke up at5:00 this morning because our dog Zhaxci decided he was lonely and that it wasa great time to bug Megan.  He wouldn’tleave me alone so I decided to just get up and take my shower (wasn’t gettingany sleeping done anyway).  After I wasshowered and dressed it was a little after 6:00 and my stomach told me I washungry.  You know, sometimes I am verygrateful for my stomach because otherwise I would not think to stop and eat; I’mjust too busy ALL OF THE TIME!  So, I atebreakfast and by that then it was time for me to start my morning battle withtraffic… I arrived on campus at 8:05, promptly when I had meant to.

Before my reflection with Sister Mary I went and printed myguided reflection questions off in Financial Aid where I struck up a conversationwith Mary Beth Lampe about how close the end of the semester was and howexcited I was.  Then I made my way backto the classroom and sat down with my peers as we waited for Sister Mary tostart the session.  By 9:40 (an entire 40minutes before our allotted time was up, but a good 45 minutes after my brainhad already traveled to my next exam) we were all finished reflecting on ourservice learning placements and I was headed to the food court to CRAM!

From 9:45 to 1:00 my friend and I studied our little heartsout trying to prepare for what was sure to be our demise in Dr. Green’s 1:15exam.  The time passed too quickly and asthe clocked turned to 1:00 we both felt those all-too-familiar pretest jitterssetting in.  We walked together incomplete silence to the education floor of the classroom building and sat downat our seats to join the rest of our classmates in last minutes glancing atnotes and prayers to St. Anthony that we would find the right answers.  The exam went by without flaw, and I actuallythink I did very well!  By 2:30 (a full35 minutes before the allotted time was up) Lori and I were back in the foodcourt, joined by two other friends, to look over our notes for our Math exam at5:30.  We studied, gossiped, talked abouthow ready to be done we all were, ate dinner and then went to the math floor ofthe science building to take our tests.

The math test was very simple and I was the first of ourstudy group to finish.  We had all agreedto wait until we were all finished and then go out to UDF to get ice cream…. SoI waited.  When everyone was done wepicked Chris up and headed out.  We weregoing to celebrate the sweet taste of FREEDOM with the sweet taste of icecream!  We all had a great time, everyonebut Chris was done with exams, and everyone but me was done with final projects(I just have a few loose ends to tie up) but we were ALL basically DONE andproud of it too!!

I drove home feeling great, dropped my stuff at my bedroomdoor and took a hot shower to wash the dirt, grime and slime of finals, exams,and cram sessions off of me and now here I sit…

I just took you through seventeen hours in 600 words… andthat’s how my day went by too, it went by fast and man am I thankful that itdid!  I hope everyone has a great summer…good luck to EVERYONE on any exams you may have left and I’ll see you aroundsometime!!

Adios, S209!

What is a Devil Dog? A devil dog is a name that the Great War veterans were referred to as by German adversaries. What this has to do with me you ask? Well as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, the Mount’s Men’s basketball team has been doing individual and group workouts this spring to improve our game and work towards the goals we want to accomplish next season. Well something new was added this year to the workout and that was the Devil Dog Days. The Devil Dog Days plain and simple were like a final exam for all the workouts we’d been doing. I bet your guessing that there’s a catch. Well you’re right because this was by far the hardest final exam I ever endured. The point and main idea of the Devil Dog Days was to form unity and a brotherhood amongst us because there was a major void in the leadership on our team this past season, hence us not accomplishing the goals we had set for the season. Now I’m building the suspense up of these Devil Dog Days and I haven’t really explained in detail what they were. Well the Devil Dog Days was a three day process in which we woke up at 6am to perform various strength, conditioning, and plyometric (jumping) exercises. These exercises were extremely rigorous and it took teamwork to get us all through them. As you probably can imagine, doing anything at 6am would be difficult especially these many exercises/drills that progressively got harder and more creative each day.

The first day we did a total of about 300 squats while holding a 25 lbs weight over our head. This was hard but we were able to pick our teammates up by holding their weight if their arms got to tired. Even though this was tough I liked it because it was showing us how to have each other’s back, a very important aspect of any successful team.

The second day was a lot rougher. Coach had us follow him past the smoking area on campus to a very grassy and forest like area with a very steep hill. I felt like I was in the movie “Remember the Titans” starring Denzel Washington. Once we got here we had to run up and down the hill a copious amount of times while holding a very heavy medicine ball. What made it worst was the grass had a lot of holes, it was slippery, and I felt like I was in Vietnam or something because the grass was so high. When we finally finished, we were exhausted but our task were far from over. After we ran all the way back to campus, we had to run a number of sprints that literally were like running two football fields.

The third and final day we thought there was no way it could be any harder than the second day. WRONG!!! Our task for the third day was to complete a very intricate and intense obstacle course that would really test our will. The obstacle course consisted of rope climbing, tire flipping, bleacher step-ups, front and lateral jumps over hurdles, a long football field length sprint, and as if that wasn’t enough, we ended it with a one mile run.

 By the end of these three days I was exhausted but I felt closer to my teammates, I felt more athletic, and we were awarded with dog tags that symbolized our brotherhood.

It's the end of the semester... :( We're studying for exams, turning in last minute projects, and packing up the dorm rooms. I've gotten to the point that I have only three more exams and I've just taught my last lesson at Oakdale. I have now turned to my dorm room. I cannot tell you how much I am a pack rat and how many things end up in places that I didn't know existed.

I had literally every wall covered with posters, pictures, and other things just EVERYWHERE! I have to take it all down too. :( I've managed to fill three boxes with pictures, books, knick knacks, pillows, blankets, and other stuff. I have, left, to pack the essential things, my bedding, bath and kitchen stuff, trash cans, clothes, the couch, foot stools, shelving units, and my fridge. It's quite a lot to move and I'm not thrilled about it. And the fact that we're moving is a problem too. What do I do with it all? Normally I would put it all in the attic and just leave it there for the summer but now that Mom is trashing the attic and putting everything AND anything in boxes, I have to put the boxes in my room and just let it all sit in the corner. It's a sad fate for the boxes and the state of my room will be horrible soon. It will have at least 6 boxes, all three of my suitcases, and tons of shelving just sitting around waiting to be moved to a new home. And me with it.

But it's interesting how things just come to an end and we can't stop it. Today is the third day of May of the year two thousand and ten and I cannot believe how quickly the time has passed! I sound like a broken record with that but I can't help it! I didn't realize how quickly time has passed! This time last year I was preparing to go to London and spend 7 weeks in foreign countries! And I'm currently reading the Gemma Doyle series by Libba Bray and in it they are in London and they're mentioning places that I know! And I only know them because I spent all that time there discovering new places in a new city in a new country. And now I've already spent my time there and I wish so desperately to go back... It's just amazing that this year I'm moving to a new home and how easily time just flies by and I don't even realize it...

Graduation is even this Saturday. I'm not graduating until May of next year but under my classification in my academic records, I'm listed as a senior because I've taken so many credits. That makes me feel so old! I cannot believe that my time in college is almost over... :( I love school and I know I'm not ready to leave it yet... Maybe that's why I'm becoming a teacher. ^-^ I even have my three month anniversary with my boyfriend this Saturday, that is how much time has flown by. I can't believe it... I also have to say goodbye to my friends who are graduating and make plans with my other friends to do things over the summer, plan things for next school year, and just generally make sure we stay in touch while we all go our separate ways for three months. I am honestly ready to do nothing for a while but I know I will regret that after only a few weeks into summer. I manage to get myself in a vicious cycle where I can't wait for school to be over, have fun with no school for a while, wish I was back in school, then dread the end of summer, happy to be back at school, then hate to be back at school, and wait until the next break. It's a cycle that is never ending and oddly very comforting to know that I know what my life will be like. And yet, I don't want to know. I don't know... :(

But I know one of the last things to come down in my dorm will be my star lights hanging in my window. They are on a timer and are on from 6 PM until about 6 AM. They are a comfort and joy to me and I love my stars. They will be the last thing to be remembered from my junior year of college... I cannot wait for the next part of my life to begin and yet I don't want to leave the comfort of what I already know behind...

Hey guys!

I wanted to use this blog to follow up on the Career Fair at Xavier University a couple weeks ago. As I told all ya, I had four interviews that were in the afternoon that same day. So I figured I should follow up on those interviews, show some manners and stuff.

The first thing I did was look up all of my interviewers names and email addresses. Two of them weren’t on any papers I had received and one of those was missing from the respective school’s website. I emailed everyone I could and expressed my thanks for the time to interview and to meet with them personally and all that jazz. I found a telephone number for the last interviewer and thanked them over the phone.  Next I did a little research on each school (your usually supposed to do this before the initial contact….oops) and completed online applications and resumes.  I received a couple emails back from the schools a few days later stating that they’d like to continue speaking with me because I seemed like a good potential fit for their school! Awesome!

 So the next order of business was to contact people that had been around me when I had done some of my best work. So I talked to my cooperating teacher for my student teaching assignment, my college supervisor, one of my bosses of my day camp job, and my college wrestling coach and asked them if they minded writing me a letter of recommendation. All these people have seen me work and interact with kids on some level and I figured would be a nice variety of witnesses for my work. Nobody said no, which I was grateful for. Now I’m just waiting on those letters ( I have one already) and a couple more dates for interviews with the remaining schools. I have one set up for this Friday, so wish me luck!

See ya!

>Eric M.

“However gifted an individual is at the outset, ifhis or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition,because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born” –Simone de Beauvoir

Why is it that we have gifted children, children that are extremelybright and very intelligent, children that are identified as so, sitting in ourgeneral classroom across the country bored to tears?  Why is it that my gifted nephew is in the office almostevery day at school for behavioral problems that no one in the family has everseen signs of in his 10 years on this planet? Why is it that we have our advanced learners failing out of high schoolor dropping out to go to the streets or to work?  Well I think it boils down to a lack ofaction and a lack of funding.

It is our job as future educators to know our students, and not just thepercentage of our students that are considered “normal,” I mean, after all…what is normal?  A teacher should take iton as her personal responsibility to try to reach the children in her classroomin some special way, to show them that she cares about them as more than a student– as a unique person.  Before going intothe research for my research paper for Mr. Santoro I had mixed feeling about gifted programs.  I myself am a product of a gifted program atthe middle school level and growing up I always thought it was unfair to belabeled as gifted because in my school it brought with it unfair stereotypicaljudgments.  If I went to my BYWAYS classeveryone else thought that I was getting special treatment that was allowing meto get off easy, but if I stayed in the general classroom I would be so boredthat I would just drift away and get in trouble for not paying attention.

It seems to me that there should be a way to give our gifted learnersmore support in this great country.  People wonder why there are no programs out there – well, it’s because there’s nomoney out there to run those programs and they don’t exactly pay for themselves now do they? When I researched the regulations regarding gifted education and found thatthere were NONE at the federal level I was in shock.  How can we leave these students without support,to go on their own separate ways and figure out how to adjust to their specialneeds the way I had to learn to do in high school and now in college?  To me, we are doing these children aninjustice by not helping them and to be completely honest, they aren’t blind…they know that their disabled counterparts have all kinds of money available tothem and that they themselves basically have none.  I’m in no way saying that funding shouldbe taken away from students with learning disabilities and handicaps, but these children needit too.

I have learned so much valuable information over the course of writingthis paper, it has made the whole course worthwhile to me.  I am a firm believer in thefact that you cannot possible know where you are going until you know where youhave come from.  I would not be nearly asprepared to facilitate lessons to fit the learning styles of the giftedchildren that may be in my future classrooms had I not written this paper.  Learning about the characteristics of giftedchildren and exploring the various strategies to use in the classroom with themoffered me a perspective on giftedness I had never been exposed to before.  I always looked at gifted and talentededucation as a gifted student, but this paper gave me a lens through which tolook at this exceptionality as an educator. Gifted education has come a long way from Plato’s Academy, but there arestill many steps that need to be made towards getting it to be where it needsto be to efficiently serve the leaders of tomorrow.

This image is from  http://www.nagc.org/index2.aspx?id=3134

Megan, New Jersey, 14 

Hey guys,

First off, let me say that this week has been one for the books, I’ll tell ya that.   Last Monday, the Education Department had its big unit plan presentations in which every senior student in the department had to present an entire unit with reflections and student work examples. Afterward, we had a nice little reception dinner with some really good food, some of the best I’ve seen around campus in all of my four years.  A lot of people were stressed out about this, but honestly, it wasn’t a big deal. I had taught a really cool unit in January and had collected all of my students’ work as I was teaching and wrote the reflections for each of my lessons the day I taught them. So really all I had to do was extend my lesson plans a little so that they fit the format the college likes and then organize all my work into a PowerPoint presentation.  Took a few hours the day of the presentation and …Viola! I was done. Presented it, got a good grade, and now I’m officially done with my student teaching and all the course work here at the college that goes along with it. One step closer to graduation.

The next day is where the craziness started. I was scheduled for another shoulder surgery to repair my left shoulder at 11:30 in the morning. I had the right shoulder repaired last May, so this made two surgeries in less than a year. AwEsOmE.  I arrived at Beacon Orthopedics, which is a great place, and did all the prep stuff and last thing I remember, I climbed off my stretcher and onto the operating table and laid there for a few seconds. Next thing I knew, I was all bandaged up and waking up in the recovery area. The cool thing was, I woke up fairly quickly and was home within 30 minutes.  I stayed up the rest of the day, watched a few movies with my dad, and waited for the nerve block they gave me in the left side of my neck to wear off.  If any of you have had this, it’s actually kinda cool. My entire left arm was completely motion and senseless. It’s an odd experience.

Here’s the crazy part. The next morning, my nerve block wore off so I had to start my pain meds. The funny thing is, I had an awards ceremony for a leadership award I had received at MSJ at noon. It was part of the Celebration of Teaching and Learning event going on across campus and there were a lot of honors to be recognized at this particular ceremony. I was able to maneuver my gimp arm through a dress shirt and managed to strangle myself with a tie and hopped in the passenger seat of my mom’s car and drove up to the Mount. I did well considering the circumstances, I only messed up once when I tried to walk up the wrong side of the stage. But the rest of the day was smooth sailing. I got back home a few hours later and sacked out for the rest of the night.

I’m not done yet.  The next day, I had my wrestling banquet and team outing to the Red’s game downtown. So once again, I managed to get myself in some decent looking clothes and hitched a ride up to school. The pain meds were a little rough, but once again, things went smoothly given the circumstances. Better yet, the Red’s actually won!  I finally got some rest on Friday and stayed in bed most of the day. 

That was my crazy week. I guess the moral of the story is to never schedule a surgery around the end of a semester or school year. Something will come up just when you need to stay at home and rest the most.  And the post surgery medications don’t do much to help matters. 

See ya!

>Eric M.

As yet another semester comes to a close, it is time to reflect on all those things that have changed over the past 15 weeks, well, actually 14 weeks as we do have 1 more week and exams yet.

This semester, I have gotten to delve more deeply into my major, Special Education, with my 5 classes: methods of math, curriculum and methods of spec. ed., diagnosis and remediation in reading, geometry, and classroom management. I have found something useful in each class, I think. Methods of math has shown me that when teaching little kids about math, we shouldn't assume everything we spell out clearly actually makes sense. Such as, if we show 2 apples plus 2 apples equals 4 apples and we ask how many apples are there, then we shouldn't be surprised if they say 8 because there is actually 8 apples on the diagram even though we're only wanting the number on the other side of the equal sign. In my curriculum and methods of spec. ed. class, I have learned to make an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), write an Evaluation Team Report (ETR), and modify assignments for a student with special needs. In my diagnosis and remediation in reading class, my teacher has shown us that we can give free and very useful reading diagnostics to evaluate the reading abilities of students who may need help. In geometry, I haven't learned anything I haven't already learned, but it was a helpful refresher course when I did get into my practicum for 4th graders. And in classroom management, I have learned different models that are helpful in discipline and structuring a classroom to promote learning, motivation, encouragement, and fun. Not every class I've taken has given me as much but this semester seems to have been a good one. I look forward to one more semester of classes before I student teach in the spring next year. That's scary...! :O

I also participated in the March for Life in Washington DC back in January, saw Jeff Dunham for the first time with my friend Nicole, created a board game that was only worth 10 points but looks like I bought it :D, saw the Polar Bear Plunge for the first time, got involved in a practicum with special needs students, saw the Saints win their first ever Super Bowl, was almost in a heads on collision, had a series of snow days and several feet of snow over the semester, witnessed an awesome winters Olympics, had my first ever real Valentine's Day, my grandpa broke his hip and is still recovering, saw Ringley Brothers and Barnum and Bailey's Circus, sold my house, bought a new house, went to Spring Formal with my boyfriend, participated in the "Bye, Bye Birdie" musical, and had too much fun at Spring Fest. It has been an action packed semester and I have enjoyed almost every minute of it!

With only one week to go, I have only two projects to finish and one paper to edit but I do have three lessons to teach for my practicum. How nerve-wrecking is that!? Then I also have three sit down exams- ewww- and one take home. That'll be fun- not. Then it's out for the summer! My parents just sold our house and bought a new one- all within a week so now we have to pack everything up and take it to the new place. Fortunately for me, most, if not all, of my stuff is in the dorms so I just have to move my stuff from school to, hopefully, the new place in two weeks, but I don't know how well that'll work out. All in all, it's a new adventure I'm looking forward to even though I'm not that excited about doing it right now. :(

With all this going on, I am swamped with things to do and finish but I am having fun taking all my learned knowledge and putting it to good use. I am excited to start some new chapters in my life and I can't wait to start! :)

One aspect of the program that I really liked is how we have guest speakers come in to speak about Athletic Training, for instance when we had a high school, collegiate, and clinical athletic trainer come in to speak with us so that we could see the differences amongst those three different levels. Another example is when we had the kinesiology presentation at the Mount, even though freshmen were not allowed to attend. In addition, I like how we have the (optional) opportunities to attend various sports medicine related meetings off campus because anytime you get a chance to learn more about your craft is always a plus. 

Despite Dr. Martin’s initial intimidating presence in the classroom, I have learned so much from her about research skills, how to become a great public speaker, and I have gained great advice that I know will help me prosper in the future. As far as research skills is concerned, Dr. Martin has  exposed us to many credible websites that contain sports medicine related articles and she told us to look at the reference page of articles to see where the authors of that article got their information from. To continue, power points are a very common and effective visual aid. Therefore, Dr. Martin advised us to use power point slides as note cards when presenting so that we aren’t just reading off the slides. She also advised us to watch the use of “um” and to know our material well enough to answer rigorous questions that say Dustin Grooms might ask. In her class, we wrote many papers and she always gave us great feedback each time for us to progress and become great writers which is a very valuable aspect of an educated individual.

I am very excited about my future at the Mount as an ATS because based on my experiences this year I am sure that if I work hard, the Mount’s AT program will provide me with the right tools to succeed. Now I know that the days ahead of me will be rigorous, which is what makes this such a great program. Nonetheless, I am up for the challenge.