Our "orientation?" Perhaps it is our "Disorientation?"

Today was the first day of our two week long orientation. Amongst the usual mission statements, ritual learning and paper-work I got wind of some real exciting news. I along with another teacher, Noam, will be teaching a Camping/Outdoor Survival Class! When given some time to brainstorm, I believe we got a really good base for a course plan. We will spend some time with basic camping techniques- pitching a tent, starting a fire and purifying water. We will then move on to campfire cooking. The students will then take some time and learn how to use a compass and complete an orienteering course. In the spirit of Andres Morantes, we will also take a few days and do some plant identification! Given enough time, we will also look at some extreme situations and how to get out of them (i.e. broke down in a snow storm, lost in the woods with a broken leg, etc).

The most interesting thing of the orientation so far is how Jennifer, the program coordinator, is carrying out our workshops. Lately I feel like I have been treated like a child when at the program, but today I realized that she is teaching us how she would teach the middle schoolers. This way we can pick up on things we can and may need to do with our students. So far she has had us present concepts in the form of graphical representations, we have used small white-boards to give answers to questions, and of course we have played the ever popular "popcorn" reading game. Besides those class participation ideas, she has also demonstrated a few techniques for getting a roaring class to pay attention again. The one most commonly used is when the teacher says "If you can hear me clap once" in a normal voice and then everyone needs to clap. Then the teacher goes on to say "If you can hear me clap twice" in a louder voice. Then everybody should clap twice. Usually by that time, all the students are back and paying attention to the teacher. If not, the teacher can go on to clapping three and four times until the entire class is paying attention.

All in all, its nice to have begun the internship. Many of the teachers are beginning to stress a little which is ok given the amount of work that needs to be done over the next two weeks. We need to create our elective classes. We need to plan two core classes and start breaking them down into units and lesson plans. We need to start forming committees and getting the various summer long activities planned. On top of that we need to learn how to deal with middle schoolers- they are a little crazy. As I alluded to in the title, its a little disorientating at the moment, but hopefully in the next few days our work will become more organized and our summer will begin to take shape.