advice?

I just talked with my advisor on skype and we discussed which courses I will be taking next term. I am going to do 3 courses (11 credits). He teaches two of the courses and I want to take one more that is a WEB course and completely online. My first two choices for the WEB course were a no go. The class called American Culture was restricted and the class on Minorities was full already. Boo!

So I am left with two more choices:

Teaching Struggling Adolescent Readers

or

Literacy Instruction for ELL students K-12

I can't decide and I definitely don't want to do both because it's expensive and 11 credits is definitely enough.

Since I am now working with several older students who are struggling readers, I feel like that course would be very applicable to my current job. The drawback is that it is more aligned with SPED and not necessarily so much with culture or multicultural education which I am trying to focus on.

The other course on teaching reading to ELL's is more applicable to my program and my overall course of study. The drawback to that one though, is that I did a whole ESOL endorsement already and I am not sure if it will really introduce a lot of new knowledge and ideas.

I am leaning towards the class geared towards middle and high school struggling readers because it is different than other classes I have taken and I have always taken classes focused on elementary students rather than older students. I think it would be good to take a class that only focuses on older students.

Which class do you think I should take?

school is expensive

I just found out that I have an outstanding balance of $41 on my school account even though my tuition for fall term was paid in full three months ago. I called the Accounts Receivable office to ask them why there was a hold on my account (preventing me from registering for winter term) and why there is an outstanding charge in the amount of $41 after I already paid.

Apparently, this is a new charge, documented as a "Rec Center fee" which students now have to pay each term to subsidize the new buildings that are being constructed on campus.

I didn't sign up for that.

I definitely understand the need for suitable learning environments, but that will be an additional $164 a year that I have to pay on top of the already costly tuition. I guess it's just a bitter pill to swallow because at this point, I am not even setting foot on campus because of my remote learning situation. hmph!

I guess it's a necessary evil..paying for the upkeep of the campus, but for some reason I feel like that money should not come out of my pocket or any students' pockets.

Here in Germany, university is free. Well, there are some nominal costs involved, but it's not at all like handing over several thousand dollars every few months.

Doesn't it make a lot more sense for learning to be free!?

***

On a different note:

I worked in my friend's 7th Grade English class today and she was using a great writing strategy she just learned about at a conference for international schools in Hamburg last week. The acronym STAR is used to help students in the revision process. This teacher used a piece of chart paper with the letters S T A R written across the top, each with its own column underneath.

The letters in STAR stand for

Substitute/Replace

Take out

Add

Rearrange

When I came in, they had already been working on this strategy and had listed different examples under each category. The goal is for students to get rid of boring useless words that don't serve a true purpose in their writing and add vibrant, significant language that is powerful and has an impact on making their writing meaningful and entertaining.

She had also written on the board:

Rule #1

Don't fall in love with your first draft.

This strategy comes from a book called Teaching Adolescent Writers by Kelly Gallagher. I only know what I saw/learned today, but it seems like a great strategy that I would enjoy learning more about. It is really important for writers to understand the value in editing, revising, and working on a piece of writing until it is ready for publishing.

NaBloPoMo Wrap-up

Today marks the last day of NaBloPoMo, but to be honest, at times, I completely forgot I was participating. My daily post has become such a part of my everyday routine, that I never felt like it was a chore to have to post. I only ran out of things to say a few times. Maybe only once. Guess I am becoming quite the chatter box. What would the written expression version of a chatterbox be?

My other goal for the month of November was my 30 Day Shred Challenge, which started out strong and fizzled towards the middle of the month. Overall I did the routines fairly consistently with an average of about every other day. Not bad. I had hoped for some amazing results, but I mostly noticed that my endurance improved. I sure sweat a lot and felt great each time I finished a workout, but I can't say that my challenge resulted in a smoking hot "shredded" bod. Oh well. I won't toss Jillian aside, I still think her workouts are hardcore. I just don't think the results are as drastic as she makes them out to be.

***

I can't believe tomorrow is the first day of December! In a mere 19 days, I will be home in CT with my family! ::BIG smiles::

Since tomorrow is December first that means we get to start our advent house! When I was little my mom always made a paper chain with one link for each day in December leading up to Christmas. She would write fun activities on the slips of paper and each day my brother and I would get to remove the link and read what we got to do that day. Sometimes it was some kind of outing like going to the library, or an activity like baking cookies. Sometimes it was something simple like everyone singing a Christmas song together. I always loved doing our special chain, so I continued the tradition with my college roommate. Our activities got a little more involved including trips to the mall for holiday shopping and dinner at our favorite restaurant. The chain was always about having special moments with the ones you love.

When my husband and I got married, I started to do the same advent type thing with him, but I recently got this cool little advent house from my mom. Each day has a door that opens to a small compartment. The perfect size for a little piece of chocolate or a small note. Since my husband is really busy during the week, I didn't want to put in too many activities that required us going out, so I wrote footrub or backrub on a lot of his little notes. He never tires of getting pampered like that. I also included a few that said, relax with a glass of wine/beer or watch a movie together. My favorite (put in for my pleasure) was read magazines in bed. Sometimes he gets a little chocolate too.

I really enjoy doing an activity based (or appreciation based) advent because it means more than just getting a piece of candy. I use the month of December as a chance to show my husband how important he is by doing something nice for him everyday and making time to spend with each other.

Tonight I have to make all his little notes to get ready for tomorrow!

productive weekend!

I am happy to report that my 20 pager is complete! I spent a lot of time yesterday finishing it up and I have to say I think it came out pretty good. It's really difficult to write research papers that include so much of what other people have thought and said. I can write from my own perspective all day, but when it comes to rephrasing very smart things said by other people, I am often hard pressed to make it sound better than how it was phrased before.

I still have some final editing to do, but the drafting stage is done and that is the hardest part! I started out trying to cheat the margins a little (yep, I'll admit it!) but by the end of my writing, I had enough even with 1" margins. I don't think my teacher is going to be super picky about that, but I had a little bit of guilt over using bigger margins just to make the paper longer. I always teased my husband about that when he was in grad school because he would write headings that included 5 lines of information that was totally unnecessary just to make the paper longer. He would write his name, the teacher's name, the course name, the date, the assignment name...Then when he finally started the paper the first line would be about a third of the way down the page. Silly boy!

I still have two more assignments to do to finish out this quarter, but neither is that awful. The biggest is the unit plan for 10 global picture books with a common theme, but the maximum page allowance is 6, so I am not too scared of that. I already have the books and the theme, so I just need to make the annotated bibliography, and write up a few lesson ideas and goals as if I were using the books in a unit. I will post my list of books because some of them are pretty cute.

Now that my paper stress is over, I am off to the gym!

Nürnberger Christkindlesmarkt

Last night some friends and I went to the opening of the Christmas Market in Nürnberg. It was so fun! During the holiday season (last week in November through Christmas), each town/city has its own Christmas Market. The one is Nürnberg is quite big and was definitely jampacked with lots of people and holiday spirit. Not to mention half meter long sausages! Whew.

I took a lot of pics and posted them on my other blog, but I know you guys enjoy seeing bits of Germany as well. Here are a few highlights:

This was how big the crowd was watching the presentation of the Christkindle (Christ's child) angel that sets off the Christmas Market season.

drinking some Glühwein (special holiday wine)

lots of Lebkuchen (gingerbread)

handmade walnut people

The children's market had a few rides

We are going again next weekend! Can't wait.

PaperPaperPaper

Nothing much to say today besides that I am trying hard to get my 20 page research paper completed this weekend. I have a little over 13 pages done at this point, which is good, but I am struggling to find the motivation to do the rest. I am getting anxious about the thought of turning it because I heard from other students in the program that they always thought they were good writers until the began the doctoral program. Apparently, they really give your stuff a beating in order to demonstrate the high standards of academic work at this level.

Fun times.

It's hard to just turn something in without having any feedback along the way. I have spoken to my advisor about the topic, but he has not checked in on the written part at all. I guess my best is all I can offer and if I end up with not great feedback, I still have plenty of program time left to improve.

The paper is due the first week in December (can you believe that is next week already!?) but I am hoping to turn it in at the end of the week as opposed to the beginning. That is just satiating my stressed mind right now because that gives me 7 days instead of 3.

Blogging is so much easier than research papers!