Hmm, it's been a while, Mr. internet.
Classes have been going fine. Two weeks ago in the Tuesday class the prof wasn't clear on what to do for a response paper, so anyone who turned one in last week was declared done for the semester. so THAT's good. one class down, two to go.
the monday class continues to plod along. we're working on different lesson plans to reflect structured input, structured output, writing, speaking, listening, reading. i'm giving the matt harring half assed approach and it seems to be working fine. eventually i'll put it all together in the TaskStream format. so that should be alright. then, because i'm one of 3 grad students in the class, i also need to be working on my final paper for the semester. it's going to be on student motivation. like most of my papers. i keep writing about motivation. i find it fascinating. mostly because i have none myself. i requested one article through interlibrary loan like a month and a half ago and it finally came in yesterday.
the wednesday class is going alright. i dont have much left to do, other than the fieldwork journal, and our group presentation. and all i have to do for the group presentation is find some articles to make the class read. i donwloaded a bunch off of the online uic library site, now i just have to read them to see if they suck or not. the two groups that presented last night were boring as shit. one was about tracking, and one was about small schools. and i think all i walked away with was a reaffirmation of everything i already knew about two of the most boring issues in education.
observing is going alright. i have 45 hours or so down. i started teaching some in the first year class. and i dont know if it's because the teacher is a control freak or because i suck, but she keeps interrupting me while i'm doing stuff. today i went over 1 page of new vocab with them, and then a worksheet of words to translate, which they were supposed to do for homework, and generally had about three out of the twenty words down. i got through ten of them. the CT did words 3-6 though. i dont know why. i have to get my shit together to interview her tomorrow for the fieldwork journal.
today on my way to observe, i saw a woman on a cell phone in an suv BACKING down the interstate because she'd missed her exit. not to mention that it was the MANNHEIM road exit on the westbound Ike. which is probably the biggest exit west of the city. it has it's own exit lane for about a mile. at least 4 signs. sighh.
my computer seems to have some lovely new spyware that ADAware and SpyBot can't kill. I've managed to get around most of it, but it keeps popping back, and I don't have the time to deal with it for another month. it seems like most days of the week i leave around 7:20am and get home between 9 and 10:30 pm. then i promptly fall asleep until the next day. i usually have a few open hours in the middle where i can't seem to get much done. what FUN.
this weekend i went down to urbana and helen and i ate a lot of FOOD. friday we made gourmet mac and cheese GF style. Helen asked me to look around whole foods for manchego cheese, which is some type of sheep cheese. i wandered around what i thought was the cheese section at least three times (based on the number of times i passed the gouda, saying "That's-a-no-gouda!") before i noticed that there was ANOTHER shelf of cheese around one more corner. Helen wasn't very pleased with my joke, but she seems to have adopted it nicely. heh heh heh.
Saturday we went out for 2 year dinner at Biaggis! Biaggi's is so damn delicious. Then Sunday we made enchiladas from scratch. the corn tortillas involved corn flour and water and were pretty good. then we got one last custard cup before they close for the winter. cold fudge is awesome.
now i should probably get back to homework.
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
