So turns out I can only put on hold 20 books at a time. So although I was bombarded with reading the first day of picking up the library books, it has slowed down. I continue to work on designing my website for my project. I have found 2 curriculum books made by TWA and now am rewriting the lessons to align with state learning standards for school and to give them a general face lift.... For instance, one the lessons referred to the fact that there is only a few dozen wolves in WI. Not sure if you followed last week's news, but the end of winter count approximated a minimum of 925 ish wolves in WI! So a few dozen doesn't really capture that. I think it is important that this curriculum should continue to be updated even after I leave. Although I predict WI wolf populations are stabilizing, so numbers are not as big of thing, but the way we manage wolves has been changing and that needs to be reflected. I do not think it is likely that teachers know the history of wolves in our state and if they saw the old lesson of a few dozen wolves, that could easily be conveyed to children and be inaccurate.
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| Preview of my website |
This brings up one of the toughest parts of being a teacher. You have to spend time to learn and continue to learn.... and learn and learn. It takes endless research to incorporate facts and lessons connecting to real-world things, plus you have to update it yearly to ensure its integrity. I was subbing one day, and they were reading this article about "fake news." I though oh, this is really relevant to what we seeing in the news. It even said something about Facebook taking initiative at that moment to filter out fake news. When I looked at the date, it was more than 2 years old. How is that relevant to students? The event happened a long time ago and there is tons of new info on fake news. Yes, I am being harsh, however, I do understand, teaching is very time consuming and admittedly if you have a good article that says most of what you want, its hard to prioritize updating. A flaw with the school system? Not sure. Teachers do work endlessly but do not get paid proportionally to what they need to do to be the best that they can be. For me it was always feeling under valued and I am not sure if the "being paid more" argument really would have fixed that feeling.
I also had a small mammal trapping opportunity that I got to get involved with through the Cable Natural History Museum. Adrian volunteered to do the trapping for their BioBlitz, which happens tomorrow! So we went out and put some small mammal traps in a 3x3 grid (10 traps per grid) out near the Sugar Bush Fen. I was in charge of putting in the peanut butter. I know this sounds a bit unexciting, however, I always wanted to do some field work! Now I did some. Would I do it again... yes. Will I apply a ton more bug spray... yes. I didn't actually get bit, however when you can hear and see them swarming you, it makes you a bit uneasy. Adrian said if this is bad, I haven't seen anything yet. So I am not looking forward to the increasing mosquito of the North, which has really started picking up. I unfortunately won't be going to set the traps and add more bait tonight, because my mom is coming! She definitely will be in for a bit of surprise when we go check the traps at the event tomorrow. With no trails and lots of bugs, I'll be interested to see her opinion. I am excited to see any voles, squirrels, mice, or shrews we catch! Adrian may even let me handle some of them! So I will have my thick leather gloves handy! For now this is an update of my summer and look forward to seeing what we catch with my next post!
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| A fawn with its mother. There was a second fawn with the family, but didn't get a picture. |
This brings up one of the toughest parts of being a teacher. You have to spend time to learn and continue to learn.... and learn and learn. It takes endless research to incorporate facts and lessons connecting to real-world things, plus you have to update it yearly to ensure its integrity. I was subbing one day, and they were reading this article about "fake news." I though oh, this is really relevant to what we seeing in the news. It even said something about Facebook taking initiative at that moment to filter out fake news. When I looked at the date, it was more than 2 years old. How is that relevant to students? The event happened a long time ago and there is tons of new info on fake news. Yes, I am being harsh, however, I do understand, teaching is very time consuming and admittedly if you have a good article that says most of what you want, its hard to prioritize updating. A flaw with the school system? Not sure. Teachers do work endlessly but do not get paid proportionally to what they need to do to be the best that they can be. For me it was always feeling under valued and I am not sure if the "being paid more" argument really would have fixed that feeling.
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