Smart Board Madness

Today, we had an early morning meeting with the crew from another school to learn about our new Smart Boards that were installed about two weeks ago. Smart Boards are like computerized white boards where you can flip back and forth from showing a computer screen to a screen that you can write on. They are very fun and flashy, but our projectors have been blowing up and have been repaired a few times already. It's mainly because we have been leaving them on for the entire length of our two hour class periods and they are in such hot little rooms.

We were all properly instructed on how to turn them on and flip from the computer screen and a "white board" page. There was a lot of "ohhs" and "ahhs" and geeky teacher talk about how they will be fun to use. Afterwards, I went out to lunch with the new teacher Marie, and we bonded a bit. We are both hippies and love environmental education.

At our teacher meeting we learned that we are getting a new boss a few days before Vicky leaves. Her name is Laura and she was the one who put together the wine tasting party. I think I will like having her as a boss. Our senior teacher, Claire, is best buddies with her, so I think that is a good sign.

Claire spent some time with me today putting together my presentation for the conference next week. She told me that it will be a good thing to put on my resume in the future. We wrote our biographies for the conference pamphlet together and turned them into single ads. We had a little too much fun putting them together. We'll see if they get approved!

I had an awesome upper elementary school class tonight. Even though this particular group of students can write paragraphs in English, I learned that they didn't know any English punctuation marks! They were actually excited to learn some grammar and it was really fun. We got through almost all of my lesson plan for the evening, but punctuation was a fun, and educational, detour!

I then taught a special "study hall" for lower elementary school students about clothing. It was a little rough because anyone in that age group can sign up to attend so they were a little nervous and no one was from any of the same classes. It was an interesting experience.