So I've just gotten home for the weekend from my third week of student teaching. I thought since it's certainly been long enough, I'd tell you about some of what has happened in my life since I started this "apprenticeship".

Well, for starters, lots of grading. I taught my first actual lesson on Wednesday, but before that, I still wanted to be productive. Grading was a great way to do just that. And it just so happened that all of my co-op's (cooperating teacher) math cl@sses were undergoing a round of quizzes. I helped make a few of them, and I wrote out solution keys. And I graded them. 17 Integrated Math 2 Honors quizzes, 30-something AP Calc AB quizzes, and 88 Honors PreCalc quizzes. This wasn't all from one day, of course. But it's still a lot. I didn't mind it at all. Even this grading was a learning process. I decided upon the point distribution (how much each type of question would be worth, for example), and I had to figure out how to give partial credit. I honestly never expected there to be such subjectivity in mathematics, but when it comes to partial credit, there definitely is unless you come up with exact degrees of correctness as part of your solution key.

My lessons so far have been rather hit or miss, though I do have to say that they're more great than good, more good than bad. After my first lesson, my co-op made some suggestions: 1) always talk even when you're writing on the board, 2) speak louder than you think you should because the vents drown out some of the sound, 3) stand to the right of where you're writing (I'm left-handed) so that the students can see what you're writing as you're writing it. I love that she has dry erase boards instead of chalkboards. I love even more the fact that she has a rainbow of colored markers to choose from. She doesn't settle for just black and blue. No, she has green and orange and yellow and brown and pink and purple and red and a light blue and... it's great. It makes drawing multiple graphs on one plane really easy. It makes showing different steps easy, too. That was definitely smart thinking on her part. But anyway, getting back to my lessons, when you think about it, her suggestions are pretty minimal. I took them to heart and was much better my second time around, even though my first lesson was technically better overall. In general, I seem to really know what I'm doing, even though much of it's coming from instinct.

I love helping the kids learn. It's always really fun when the kids have review worksheets to work on in cl@ss and I walk around to answer any questions they may have about certain problems. I'm actually relearning the material (I barely remembered logarithms before this week but now I'm a pro!) as I'm helping them, but that's not the best part about it. The best part is that through helping them out, they're getting to know me and I'm getting to know them. There are so many of them that I like. I look forward to each cl@ss because of these select individuals. The list of such individuals for each cl@ss will certainly grow as I get to know more of them by more than just their face, but I like that I'm getting better with names. And of course, the kids love it when I start calling them by their names without having to call it out first or have them tell me. The same is true in reverse. The kids have started to say hi to me in the halls if we run into each other. I'm recognizing them from cl@ss (which is a big deal in and of itself), and they're saying hi to me. This means they like me to some degree! On top of this, they're starting to become much more willing to voluntarily come up to me for help during cl@ss, whereas in the beginning they didn't trust or know my level of mathematical knowledge or maybe thought I wasn't an approachable guy (a tragically incorrect perception). In fact, today I heard my name being called (Mr. Soandso) across the room on several occasions, haha! It's just so great.

So far, I've only taken over my co-op's Integrated Math 2 Honors cl@ss. I am completely in charge of it. I'm writing up the lessons, writing up their homework worksheets, writing up their quizzes/tests, grading their homework/tests/quizzes, and of course, teaching the lessons. I am completely in control of their cl@ss, from now until I am done student teaching. But this is not the end. I have to takeover nearly all of my co-op's cl@sses. I've got a couple of lessons written up for her AP Calc BC cl@ss (which love me, btw), but in fact, my next conquests are her three Honors Pre-Calc cl@sses. They're all the same, except the obvious difference of cl@ss composition. They're in exactly the same spot in their textbooks, and they do exactly the same work. So in theory, it should be easy to take them over. I could probably take them all over all at once. I don't know how I'm going to do it. I'm a little nervous about the material that I'm going to need to cover with them. But, my co-op will be there to help me and let me know what I definitely do and/or really don't need to cover. The thing is that I need to get on this soon. I need a minimum of 180 teaching hours by the end of the semester (the end of May) and so far, after three weeks, I only have about 21. Time to face my fears and just go for it. The kids are great and will certainly make it slightly easier rather than harder. I definitely consider myself lucky in that respect. The other math student teachers are actually jealous that I get to teach the subject matter that I do and have behaving kids like I do, hehe. I worry that because they're so good, I'm missing out on getting experience in the one area that I'm probably the worst in: cl@assroom management. But that's for another blog post.

I'm all out of words for now. Happy gaming! =D

Okay, I just found this on OCR and could not withhold it from all of you. This is an OC Remix of a song from FF7 (Red XIII's theme, I think), made into a custom track for Guitar Hero. The epitome of awesome. Check it out. It's really too sick for words.

Lunatic Moon

Hey everyone! I feel like it's been a while since I've written a serious entry. That's my own fault, of course, but I do prefer to post relevant posts, as opposed to what I consider "impulsive" posts.

I see I'm almost lvl21. That's certainly exciting. It has taken just over two months to work through the metallic slime, but I never felt annoyed by it. I knew it was going to take a while and so instead of forcing myself to ensure 3% worth of experience each day, I just did whatever I wanted to do on the site each day and let the leveling take its course. Now that I'm about to overcome the Metal Slime, it should be fun getting levels at a brisk pace again. Level gaining in general doesn't really matter that much to me anymore, though, since anything after lvl20 is icing.

Staying true to my objectives, I haven't done much gaming since declaring my aim to read Star Wars novels through the year. I've picked up my DS to play Lego Star Wars for about three hours over the last three weeks' time. In my spare time, I have been picking up the book of the moment and enjoying it. Since my initial announcement, I have read five books: Labyrinth of Evil, Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, the Episode IV novelization, Allegiance, and the Episode V novelization. This puts me at Shadows of the Empire, which I have been very eager to read for a long time now. I own the N64 game and very much loved it. It's a shame that I didn't know a Shadows of the Empire novel existed until two years ago, when I was browsing the selection of Star Wars novels at my local Borders with my ex-girlfriend. Well, that doesn't matter now. I'm going to finally get the chance to read it. Heck, I'll probably start reading it as soon as this post is submitted. And so I keep on keeping on.

Student Teaching begins next Monday. I really hope I can still manage to have some spare time, amidst all of my new teacherly duties. I'm sure I'll be loving every minute of the student teaching once I get the hang of it, but I would still like to be able to read novels during the semester. It'd really stink if I had no time for myself for an entire semester! That's happened once before, and it took quite a while to recover from. Well, I'll see how it goes.

By the way, going back to the topic of Star Wars, my soundtrack collection is finally complete. My younger brother thought to get me the remaining three film soundtracks, the ones I didn't yet own, for my birthday. These were Episodes II, V, and VI. Very cool. I'm almost thinking of putting them onto my iPod, just so I can blast the tracks with my Bose Sounddock. :D

Well, that's all I've got for now. Happy gaming!

OMG, I almost want this really badly. For the longest time, I've wanted a bright blue handheld (not like the dark blue the SP came out in). And so news of this comes along and now I'm thinking. But, you can't exchange one DS lite for another. And I don't have money to spare to pay the difference. And what's the point of continuously coming out with new colors anyway? ARG.

Well, what do you guys think about this?

Spiffy blueness

ME!

I'm trying not to make a big deal out of it because I don't like my floormates very much and I know they'd give me all this grief about going out and partying. But you guys are cool and so I'm telling you. E-cookies and e-cupcakes are definitely welcome. :)

YAY! I was wondering when the emblems for Reader's Choice were going to be given out! I even voted three times to make sure I got it (last year I voted, but didn't get anything T.T ). So that's cool. Equally cool is the fact I'm now into my second row. It took me long enough, hehe. I don't really shoot for emblems, especially since they seem to be so hard to earn (a.k.a. I'm not going to rank a ton of games as all 10's or all 1's just to get an emblem, or load up my collection with games I don't have just to get those emblems). But it's nice to get them when I get them.

Congrats to everyone else who got one, too. 8)

In light of my recent decision to jump back into reading Star Wars novels, I have also decided that since my wallet is not bottomless, I am going to have to eliminate some games off my want list. Surprisingly, this wasn't that hard to do. I had a lot of games in my "tracking" list that I was just barely interested in and so they were quick to go and easy to let go of.

What went and what stayed? Well, Advance Wars Days of Ruin is off the list, for starters. Since I just bought Dual Strike last November, I'm really in no rush to get another AW. Plus, I think that one game will suffice for a good long time as far as AW is concerned, anyway. Another game off the list is Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles. This game got knocked off simply because in the grand scheme of things, I hadn't been psyched about it long enough and also, there are just too many other games I definitely want. Like I said, I don't have the money to go and buy everything. And besides, I take pride in the fact that my DS collection possesses no stinkers, no bombs. I don't like wasting money, and I certainly don't like looking back and realizing I wasted money. So, yeah. I'm sure many other gamers will wholeheartedly enjoy those titles, but I won't be one of them.

Now on the other hand, games that are definitely still on the list, that I'm really excited for and wish would come out like, tomorrow, are the following:

Nanostray 2 - Despite the mediocre reviews listed thus far on this site, I am remaining optimistic that this game will provide an incredibly fun and challenging "shmup" experience. I'll probably spend some of my birthday money on it.

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword - This game looks beautiful. It seems to play really well. And it has ninjas. You cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT, go wrong with ninjas. I've been tracking this game for what feels like a year now. When it finally does come out, I'll be ready to get my ninja on.

Star Wars The Force Unleashed - Just recently did I become ridiculously excited about this game. Yes, playing and beating Lego Star Wars did partially act as a catalyst for these feelings but still. I love Star Wars video games. Shadows of the Empire, Battlefront, Battlefront 2. Yeah. The story alone has got me very intrigued. My only reservation at the moment is how it will look and play on the DS. I've seen screenshots and trailers for console versions and it looks dang good, but how will that translate onto Nintendo's handheld? I want to do all that crazy **** with the Force, too!

Exit DS - Ever since I first noticed the PSP title, I was interested. An interesting arcade-like puzzle game involving a Zorro-like hero...how can you not be intrigued by that? Now as you must be thinking, no sooner did I start getting excited about the game did I notice it was a PSP-exclusive. "NOOOO!!!!!", I thought. Well, someone got smart and now there's a DS version coming out. How closely it will resemble or identically match the PSP version is still an unknown, but however, I've seen a trailer and I can't wait.

Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman - Following on the tail of LSW comes these two destined c-l-a-s-s-ics (I really hate this bug/glitch/whatever this is...so dumb). If you think that it's just going to be more monotonous stud collecting and character swapping, you're wrong. These two games are going to be tailored to each franchise's unique stories, universe, and feel. The recent issue of Game Informer went into quite a bit of detail regarding how. Seeing as how even the DS version of LSWTCS shined, I don't see these games being anything less than awesome. Sure I wish the DS version looked as good as the console versions (soooo shiiiinnnyyyyy), but as long as Traveler's Tales is making the DS versions, then I have nothing to worry about except how I'm going to make it until their respective release dates, which btw, are June and autumn, respectively, atm.

I beat Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga last Thursday night and by doing so, I'd become inspired. I have since jumped headfirst into reading Star Wars novels. I read quite a few novels three summers ago, getting up to right before Episode III. That's where I'm starting right now. My goal is to get all the way up to the New Jedi Order series by the end of the year. It's certainly an ambitious goal, given how many books stand between where I am now and where NJO is on the timeline, but we'll see.

Well, back to reading. I've got a couple of hours to kill before my first cIass.

And yes, this probably means that I won't be doing any gaming or buying as many DS games as I was initially planning to. I need the money for books, hehe. :)

...quite possibly the absolute sickest thing I've ever seen (sick as in ridiculous, insane not disturbing).

Game Room

I mean, s/he's more stocked than my local Gamestop. S/he must either get most of the games for free or they're extremely and consistently poor because that is just, wow. Well, Jen, someone's definitely got you beat, haha. :P