I work at St. Joseph School, downtown Cincinnati, through the work study program here at the College of Mount St. Joseph.  I chose to go to St. Joe’s for this AED 210 (Art Experiences for Children) class assignment because I love our art teacher Elaine Hoblik and I wanted to see how she handled her classroom.  When I arrived at school at 7:00 this morning Mrs. Hoblik was downstairs in the cafeteria greeting and monitoring the students as they arrived off the bus or with parents.  As they waited for their teachers to come and pick them up the students chatted happily with one another and visited with friends.  A small group of kindergarten students came up to Mrs. Hoblik and I and excitedly asked their teacher if they were going to be continuing work on their abstract pieces from the previous day.  It was great to see how excited they were about their work and their excitement really piqued my interest in just what it was that they were working on.

            After morning duty the students are picked up by their teachers and Mrs. Hoblik and I could go upstairs to her classroom and talk briefly about what the classes were working on, what they had already done with the lesson and where they would be going with their final pieces.  Mrs. Hoblik told me that they were doing a unit on abstract art and on thinking outside the box.  She is doing the same assignment with grades K-3 and her daily schedule works out nicely to where she has all grade levels consecutively throughout the day on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s.  I got to see the Kindergarten, First and Second Grade classes.  The children had all gotten their paper the previous day and had drawn their lines.  The lines all had to be moving lines, in other words none of them were allowed to be straight.  Some lines would be crossing each other and some would even run off the page.  When you had your lines down then you were supposed to color in the sections made by the lines.  Whenever two lines crossed each other they were instructed to change the color of the crayon they were using so that there were never two of the same colors together.

            Most of the students were still coloring and Mrs. Hoblik doesn’t tell the students where their projects are going to encourage more creativity so that’s when I asked her what the final outcome was going to be.  She told me that she would be blending this abstract unit with a weaving unit for Easter.  These abstract coloring pages would be cut up in the shape of Easter Eggs and those eggs would then be placed in baskets that the students were going to weave out of construction paper and assemble themselves.  I thought it was a very cute assignment that nicely put together two units of art and a lot of creativity on the student’s behalves as well.

            St. Joseph just continues to influence my views on my future career in more ways than I could have ever possibly imagined.  All of my experiences at the school have taught me something about how I will handle my future classrooms.  I hope to get the opportunity to either teach some art classes or integrate art into my general classes and what I saw today with the overall way Mrs. Hoblik handled her room will help me with those future situations.  While most of what I saw was definitely positive there were some things that I would have done differently had I been running the class.  Mrs. Hoblik would go to a particular student and take their hand in hers and draw the lines on their paper, she sometimes even colored or drew right on a student’s artwork and I didn’t like that.  I don’t think I would ever draw on a student’s artwork.  Another thing that I thought I would handle differently than Mrs. Hoblik was the way she handled the kids’ questions on why they weren’t allowed to have any straight lines, I feel like she didn’t answer their questions in an appropriate manner.  Overall, however, this experience was fun and it will definitely be beneficial to me in my future career.

On my way into work this morning, while listening to Tim and My Mom Calls Me George on KISS107, I heard two familiar voices.  They were the voices of Sister Mary Bookser and Father John.  Sister Mary and Father John were on the radio telling people about Ash Wednesday. 

When I got to work, I signed in at the fornt desk and then went downstairs to the third grade classroom where Ms. Byes was asking her class to tell her what they knew about Ash Wednesday and suddenly I realized... "they probably know more than I do, in fact, I'm sure they know more than I do."  Unfortunately I am not, nor have I ever really been, a practicing Catholic despite the fact that I was baptized in the Catholic Church and raised in part by a mother who was brought up strictly Catholic.  It really bothered me when I realized that the only thing I knew about Ash Wednesday was the fact that people got a cross on their forehead.  There was so much I didn't know... why ashes? what was it for? what did it symbolize?  Just so much I wanted to learn... and my kids taught me.

Ash Wednesday is the start of the 40 days and 40 nights of lent.  Lent is intended to strengthen your bond with God and bring you closer to Him through the sacrifice of going without something you love for 40 days.  Lent is preparation for the Easter season, which is a celebration of Jesus rising from the tomb.  The ashes are from the palms of palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter) and go on the forhead of everyone that participates in the Ash Wednesday service... which is where my third graders are now.  I'm not allowed to take part in anything religious or political as a rule of the work study program at the Mount, which is why I pretended to be busy grading papers in the back of the classroom while I listened this afternoon and got the answers to my questions.

What are some of the things that my kids are giving up?

Well... let's see, I heard: ice cream, pop, candy, video games, basketball, cartoons, sleeping in on the weekends... and several more.  Technically I am here to help these children learn, but it has proven, and will most likely proving true that I learn more from them every day than I could ever possibly hope to teach them.

Perhaps I will think about giving something up for lent, maybe that will help me along my way in my desire to become a true Catholic... we'll see...

 Until next time....

I wanted to share with you all my spin on one of the assignments for my Art Experiences for Children class.  We were supposed to create an animal, one that no one had ever seen before.  We were asked to fill out a fact card on that animal with it habitat and classifications and all of that stuff.  Then we were supposed to draw our animal and color it.  after the drawing we were asked to construct our animals using model magic and pipe cleaners... the whole project was right up my alley... I LOVED it!  But to make thing EVEN BETTER, for homework we were asked to write about our animals.  Our objective was to present the animal to our class (in the future) as a mascot and role model for our kids.  That's pretty much all mrs. Dick told us because she wanted to see where we would take the assignment on our own without too much guidance from her.  Here's where I went with it:

             Somewhere in the south there’s a place… place that can only exist if you truly believe in it.  The place is called Flagrance and it’s packed full of interesting and unique animals just waiting to be found.  It is in the steamy land Flagrance, and only there, that you can meet the dwindling race of the equiferno.  Now remember… you have to believe, because nothing is ever true if you don’t completely believe in it…

Do you believe? Good.

Now close your eyes and open your imagination as I tell you the story of an equiferno different than any other equiferno in Flagrance.  This fun-loving and caring equiferno goes by the name Morph. Why Morph?  Well because he is the only equiferno in all the land to be so brightly colored.  Morph is ten years old and he has a mother, a father and a little sister named Finale.  If you were to see Morph with his family you would never know that he was part of it.  Why?  Well because he is so brightly colored.  Let me tell you what his parents and sister look like and then you will know why that is so different.

Morph’s parents and Finale look mostly the same as one another and mostly the same as all the other equiferno families in Flagrance.  They have coal black bodies embellished with orange flames and large, powerful gray wings.  “Well that’s different than anything I’ve ever heard of before,” you say?  Well, yes, but remember… you’re imagining a world that no one has ever seen before.  So how is Morph so different?  Well Morph is a rich and royal blue color.  His mane and tail flames are made of the brightest blues, oranges, and yellows.  The powerful wings on either side of his sleek body are the most elegant violet you could possibly imagine and the lightning bolt (that all equifernos have) is a bright blue instead of the usual white.

What’s that you say?  It must be pretty cool to be the brightest in all the land?  Well that’s not how Morph feels.  Think about all the kids you go to school with… most of them enjoy the same things, wear the same kinds of clothes and like the same movies.  Now what would happen if someone new came along that was different than anyone ever before.  People would probably talk about that person, even make fun of them, wouldn’t they? You might even be the one to do it.  Well Morph would like to tell you something…

“I have come a long, long way to your class, from my home in Flagrance, to share an important lesson with you and I will be visiting all year!” says Morph.  “I want you all to try really hard to except one another for the person that each and every one of you is inside.  Each one of you is unique and special inside, just like I am on the outside, and I want you to know that even if you look different on the outside too, that’s okay.  When I catch someone in the classroom doing something especially nice for one of their classmates, that person will get the chance to spend the whole class with me at their desk!  My goal is to spend a day with everyone in this class at least once this year and in order to do that it’s going to take a team effort on your part, an effort to be kind and caring, all of the time, whenever you walk through Mrs. Rudd’s classroom door.  I know you can all do it and I’ll be here all along to show you how fun it can be to BE DIFFERENT!”

We were supposed to write as if we were writing to our own class in the future.  I will be teaching elementary school so I was aiming for 7 to 9-year-olds.  My 7 -year-old niece loved it and so did her 8-year-old brother... it may seem kind of silly, but I am really proud of this story! As soon as Morph (the statue) is finished I will post pictures of him along with my fact shet and drawing of him :)

Until next time...

 

Last night was one of those nights... you know, the ones where nothing ever goes right and you flip out and say, hmmm I dunno, you completely tear apart your room, rearrange it, drop a futon on your toe, get mad and go to bed.  Well notice there was NO hmework anywhere in that sentence, none at all.  Know what that means?  That means that it had to be done this morning.

I was up at 4:00 this morning, I wrote a two page response on instructional and institutional responsibilities to students with exceptionalities, I completed twelve math problems that were review for my math test tonight, I read the 10 page selection that we have a quiz on for Dr. Green's class today, I got dressd, ate breakfast and packed a lunch.  I joined the throngs of other morning commuters fighting for spots on the high way and pulled into the parking lot here at the Mount at promptly 7:45 (somehow, exactly when I planned on being here).  I will be here until 8:30 tonight which makes for a VERY long day, but you know what??  I'm happy...

It's light outside, the sky looks slightly like cotton candy, warmer weather is on its way and the birds are singing their good morning songa again.  I have an incredibly busy day today but I'm not dreading it because Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days that I learn the most from my classes here at MSJ.  Tues/Thurs are full days, but they are satisfying and beneficial... they do their job by giving me the fundations on which t build a successful career as an educator in the real world. 

Mr. Santoro's class is about to start, so I'll have to post my art project later today.

Until next time...

 

I think it's safe to say that you have too many books in your bookbag (which generally means too much HOMEWORK) when you're driving down the road and your car starts beeping at you... You look down at the dash and see the passenger seat belt light flashing on and off.  My book bag was sitting in my car this morning and my car did its job and told me that the "person" in the passenger seat wasn't strapped in... it wanted me to put a seat belt on them.  The seat is weight sensitive so that when anyone sits in it without a seat belt the car will beep until the seat belt is engaged and the "person" in the seat was actualyy my poor, unfortunate, overstuffed bookbag.

Now you may not think that there's anything particularly fascinating about this incident, but I found it immensely amusing at 7:00 this morning when I left my house to go to class.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why my classload feels so heavy this semester... I'm not taking as many credits as I did last semester and I'm more on top of things this semester too... No explanation for it I guess.

Talking to my friends I've come to realize that I'm not the only one that feels this way.  Is it because we're all taking a double service learning credits or because we have Mr. Santoro and Dr. Green back to back in the same semester... or is it something entirely different?

 I don't know, but I do know that this semester will be an INTERESTING one to say the least...

...in my next post I hope to share with you all a project from my Art Education class.

Why is it that sleeping babies won't sleep? Why is it that car radios are capable of being turned up so high that they blow out the speakers? Why is it that yellow and blue make green? Why does stonehenge stand upright and who were the statues of Easter Island supposed to be? These are the unanswered questions that people have been battling with for centuries. What I would like to know is why in the world it is colder this week than it was last week!?  I mean come on, there was actual snow on the ground last week and this week we have rain, just by the facts of science that means that it's physically warmer this week than last, but my hands and ears and face are telling me differently. I just don't get it.

Anyway, on to something that actually has to do with the Mount.  This is the beginning of the second week of classes and things are finally settling in.  All of the syllabi are out, service learning training and orientations are almost over and the homework is pouring in... heck, we even have our midterm project alrady in one of my classes.  Break is definitely over and its back to the grind for the sudents of Mount St. Joe.

All of my classes this semester are classes relating to my IEC major, so it should be a really exciting semester! Exciting but most likely difficult too. I'm doing 60 hours for service learning, I have SED215 with Santoro, EDU255 with Green, RDG215 with Miller, AED210 with Sylvia Dick, and MTH143 with Angela Smith. It's a full schedule but I anticipate learning a lot and enjoying all of my classes to at least some extent. Well that's all for now... 

Throughout my year and my experiences with my family and at the schools I have attended I have developed a strong sense of civic responsibility.  Berk defines civic responsibility as a “complex combination of cognition, emotion, and behavior that involves knowledge of political issues, a desire to make a difference in the community, and skill for achieving civic goals” (Berk, p. 504).
        My parents and member of my extended family have always encouraged me to be active in the community.  I loved being active in high school, I was part of everything that I wanted to be a part of.  I was a member of National Honor Society, I was on the Student Council, and I was an aide in the office.  My involvement allowed me to get to know the community of my school on a personal level, sort of a behind the scenes type deal.  Everyone knew me and they knew that they could count on me to get things done right and on time. 
        I chose to go to the Mount because when I visited it felt like a family, it felt a lot like my high school had felt to me.  The Mount has a strong emphasis on leadership and community service and it has further enriched my background.  Just this semester I completed my first service learning course.  I volunteered with the Tin Roof foundation and they have changed my life in more ways than I could possibly count.  I get a rush from helping others, it makes me feel like I’m actually doing something important for the world.  It’s a good feeling and I think more high school and colleges should encourage their student to undertake some form of civic responsibility.  It’s a win-win situation.  You learn a lot about life while helping others.
        Aside from the feel-good feeling and life lessons, you also get a first hand sense of what the world outside is like.  You get a preview of real life and a sneak peek at the kinds of things maybe you’ll be handling from the other side of the window someday.  There’s just nothing bad about community service and other acts of civil responsibility, it can only help, it cannot and will not hurt.

        For my service leaning credit with my HON: United Nations Millennial Goals class with Drs. Barkley and Bodle this semester I have volunteered with an organization called the Tin Roof Foundation.  Charlene and Al Meyer run this not-for-profit organization out of their home in Anderson Township, but they are touching the lives of children thousands of miles away… in Nicaragua; they are bringing hope to these children.  One major enemy that they battle with the children in these poverty stricken areas is malnutrition.  Malnutrition plagues about one-third of the world’s population of children before the age of 5.  The Tin Roof deals most directly with two diseases, the same two diseases mentioned in our Child Development text book: marasmus and kwashiorkor.

        Marasmus is caused by a diet lacking in essential nutrients.  Marasmus usually strikes within the first year of life.  Charlene and Al talk about beautiful babies that are born to mothers who don’t have proper nutrition and therefore don’t lactate enough to support their infants.  Infants born to these mothers are fed a mixture of sugar and water and eventually they begin wasting away to nothing right before your eyes.  The starving baby becomes emaciated and is in imminent danger of dying from the disease.

        Another disease you see a lot of in Nicaragua, and in areas like it, is kwashiorkor.  Kwashiorkor is very common because it’s caused by a diet that is very severely low in protein.  Kwashiorkor doesn’t usually hit until an infant has been weaned.  Many children, ranging in age from 1 to about 3, in third-world countries have diets that are rich in starches, but they get little to no protein in their diets.  In response to this lack of protein the child’s body begins to feed off of its own protein stores and soon the belly and feet swell, their hair starts to fall out and they can develop a nasty skin rash.  As with marasmus, kwashiorkor takes a beautiful child that is full of life and turns them into a listless zombie living in the prison of a body that is failing them.

        If a child survives these deadly forms of malnutrition they suffer from stunted growth and grow to be small in all body dimensions and exhibits signs of lasting and irreversible damage to their vital organs like their heart, brain and liver.  Aside from the physical effects, which are enough to horrify anyone with a heart, these innocent children also suffer from long-term intellectual and emotional issues.  There are things that people can do to help and a lot of times those things are based in education.  Charlene and Al not only fund meal centers for children in several villages, but they also fund the educations of the children’s parents about proper nutrition and how it can be achieved in the geographic region. 

        I hope to be traveling with Charlene and Al sometime in the very near future, helping to spread the seed of hope.

         I am a new member of Lions for Life, the pro-life club here on campus, and everyone automatically thinks that we are all anti-abortion all the time and nothing else.  That couldn’t be further from the truth if it tried to be.  We have members who are pro-life, we have members who are pro-choice, and we have members that are neither pro-life nor pro-choice.  I am one of the members who, more often than not, falls into the “neither-nor” category, but that is a different story all together.  One of the biggest issues I think Lions for Life can take action on would be infant mortality rates here in the United States.
 
         The United States is ranked 26th (worldwide), trailing countries like Hong Kong, Ireland, Singapore, and Spain, on the issue of infant deaths within the first year of life (Berk, Child Development, p.33).  As far as I’m concerned, “infant mortality” should encompass not only those babies that are brought to full term and then die within the first year, but it should also include those innocent lives that are taken by the hands of the parents they are sent home from our “great hospitals” with; the adults that are supposed to be the responsible party, the people who we give the job of giving their newborn infant a voice of his or her own.  Infants are sent home with parents who have drug addictions, severe financial issues, mental instability, and numerous other things.  These children are often murdered brutally within days or weeks of being sent home from the hospital with their “caregivers.”  You can see stories like this almost every day when you open up the paper or switch on the TV.  It’s just absolutely sickening and it makes my blood run cold.

        Why is it that in this great nation, where everyone is supposed to have certain unalienable rights, that infants, the very future of our society, are not being looked after as they should be.  I don’t think a child should be forgotten as soon as he or she is sent home from the hospital with his or her parents.  Health care providers should follow up in the weeks following their release from the hospital to see that they are being cared for.  It is unnecessary for the United States to have such widespread issues with the death and poverty of infants and also children of very young ages.  What is happening in this country is the exact polar opposite of what should be happening and it’s just sad…  We put millions and millions of tax dollars into the capture, punishment, and maintenance of robbers, rapists, and homicidal murderers who take the lives of complete strangers… can’t some effort be made to save the children that our future depend on!?  Take some of the attention off of the low life criminals in the state prisons and county jails and open our eyes to see the babies that we are sending home to become victims of heinous murders!   I love my country, but I do not love what my country is doing for its future generations.

I have been watching the miracle of infancy unfold, like a rose in the morning sun, all semester with my niece Skylar.  It’s a miracle to behold.  She’s five-and-a-half months old.  She’s right at that age where all of the fun stuff happens…  I babysit her, and her siblings, every Friday night and in just one week’s time she manages to grow SO much!  Not in as she has gotten necessarily bigger or longer or anything, but as in she ACTS older!  I showed up at my brothers house Friday night and Sky was in her play seat (like a walker with a bottom on it because she hasn’t started walking yet) in the living room and she was having what looked like an intense staring contest with a blue and white plastic cow on a spring. 

      I walked and said, “Hi Junebug!! How’s my baby!?”  She broke her concentration and looked up at me as soon as I said her nickname.  She has recognized my voice and my face for several weeks now, but she has never looked at me quite so intently.  She stared for a few seconds, smiled that infectious little smile of her, giggled and then went right back to her staring contest with Mr. Cow.  I was blown away, just in the first five minutes of being there, by how much she had seemed to change in the last week.  She stayed in that seat and played with the various toys around her for almost an hour… but she wasn’t just playing to play, she was specifically manipulating the toys to do what they were intended to do.

      As the night went on I began to notice other little things… she’s gotten to the age now where she likes to lay on the floor.  Now, rather than just lay there and stare at whatever happens to be in her line of sight, she moves around and controls what she wants to see when she wants to see it.  I noticed her starting to play with her feet and analyze her hands in front of her face like she’d never seen them before.  It occurred to me that I was witnessing Skylar discovering her world in ways she had never known before.  I am experiencing the beginnings of what will be happening in her body according to the dynamic systems theory of motor development.  The new control that Skylar is experiencing of the various parts of her body will eventually combine to “produce more effective ways of exploring and controlling the environment” (Child Development - p.146).  I can’t imagine anything more perfect than having my niece Skylar to demonstrate for me everything we've discussed in my Psychology class this semester!