How Science Began...

So it was a little hard to get my brain back in gear today... I definitely did NOT want to get out of bed this morning (and my fat kitty didn't want me to either!) and it didn't help that it was very cloudy and gloomy. But up I got anyway, and off to school I went!

We met up at the Education House and our crew of 6 were joined by a few others. Two of them are secondary MAT students who are working with the 6th grade classes at the science camp so they can have the middle-school age experience since their student teaching will be in a high school. Two others are undergrad students who are doing CC's "9th semester" program which is a Colorado teaching certification (without the masters degree). So there are a total of 10 of us, along with 11 teachers (one of them doesn't have one of us) along with our professor and his co-director of the science camp. The Wiz-Bang Science camp is divided into grade levels (instead of class topics like the GT program was) and there is an overall theme (I think the theme-thing is new this year) so this year we're all "Going Green." I'm sure there will be more on that later.

So anyway! We all piled into a few cars and drove up to the CC cabin. Just as a side-note... Woodland Park and/or Divide have been added to the list of places that I could see myself living after school is over. The CC cabin was just past Divide, and although it had dirt road access, most of the cars parked off the main road and we hiked the short 1/2 mile up to the cabin. Its a really beautiful setup and I could definitely see the benefits of bringing small classes there. It was still cool and cloudy, so we were inside for the biggest chunk of the morning. My one criticism of the day was that there wasn't a big group introduction/team building activity... we ended up in lots of different groups throughout the day, so eventually it worked out, but there wasn't a lot of cohesiveness to start with. Especially with the camaraderie of the teachers who have done this through many years. There also needed to be a mental-gear-shift from the program we were just in to this one as they are VERY different. This will definitely be a good thing, but it just wasn't something they offered up as a point of clarity, and it certainly would have made a difference to me ... at least for my thought processes throughout the day. So to make a long story short (too late) we spent the day doing a variety of experiments and group-exercises led by the different teachers. It was fun, although I'm a little worried that the "science" that I really enjoy is the stuff that it takes years of "basics" to get to... and therefore I might find it difficult to "dumb it down" for the elementary grades because I feel like I am not giving them all the information (which in science can translate into a misunderstanding!) We had also kind of been told that we got to make up our own curriculum for the program, which is not true, so I was bummed about that also... but we'll just see how it goes. I'll be teaching 3rd grade (We also thought we would be in different grades than we will be in the coming school year, but that we were misinformed there) and my mentor teacher seems very nice. We spend a good chunk of this upcoming week planning for the kids, so I'll fill you in on that as it goes along.

All in all I'm glad we had this transition day before we're thrown back into the classroom. I don't know if having "the break" this weekend helped or just made me more tired, and I am sure I will feel more into it tomorrow, but tonight 13 more months of this seems like a very very long time. Everyone says that this first summer is the hardest, so hopefully we'll all get over this hump and then at least have some forward momentum to work with on the other side. But for now... we'll see what tomorrow brings.