CAS

  February 18, 2021 Well, this week has been an ordeal. I had planned on going camping over the weekend but every single plan had to be changed due to the weather. We had a huge freeze come through and basically take everything out. Roads were dangerous, power went out, water went out, the whole 9 yards. First of all this was an awful situation as it got incredibly cold incredibly quickly as our houses here in Texas were designed to get rid of heat as fast as possible and when the heaters don’t have power the temperature dropped pretty quickly. Luckily I had had all of my camping things but we went to work trying to make sure that we could deal with outages as best we could. I passed around my jackets and flashlights and we all had one with us before the power went out because we knew it was going to go out soon and wanted to be ready. I also went with Nathaniel to the grocery store to pick up food and water when we had a chance because we didn’t know how long it would all ask. I d...

  January 20, 2021 I have been working on Purella (our spin off of Cinderella) and we have added parodies of ABBA songs to it which has not only been challenging, but also really really entertaining. It is incredibly fortunate that “Dancing Queen” and “Quarantine” rhyme and have the same amount of syllables. Here’s the chorus of our first song   (To the tune of dancing queen) “Cause this is quarantine A-void-ing, Co-vid 19 Quarantine Wash your hands, make sure you’re clean, ooooo yeahahaha You can plant, you can bake, look at the things you can make See the news, watch the streets It’s quarantine!” This was absolutely creativity and I believe that it fell under learning outcome 5 as this entire musical was a collaborative piece put together by the whole J-Term group

  December 9, 2020 Today I worked with my classmates who will be in my J-Term to come up with ideas for what we wanted to make our musical about. We briefly discussed making something loosely themed around the Lorax but that didn’t have much support. In the end, we decided that we were going to follow in the footsteps of British Pantomime and create a spin-off of cinderella set in 2020 titled “purella” I am very excited about this and we have a few jokes ideas already planned that we will incorporate into our actual show that we will perform in January. This was a creative process that I believe fulfilled learning outcome 3 as we were initiating and planning this experience that we will do during our J-Term

November 10, 2020 WE’VE DONE IT! The planter boxes are finally complete and filled! I had taken a bit of a break from shoveling dirt in October because after shoveling dirt for enough time it actually starts to get a bit tedious (crazy, I know) but they are done!! It is a very nice sight to look at and see the progress that has been accomplished. It has been a long and arduous journey. The hardest part about it was keeping continued motivation to keep working on it knowing that we would not be planting anything in it for months to come because it was becoming winter and anything that we would plant would die as the temperature dropped. I am very excited to actually have fresh vegetables later in the year. I believe that the process of making these boxes from the inception of the idea to the completion of the actual finished boxes is a perfect demonstration of learning outcome 4 “Show commitment to and perseverance in a fieldwork experience and falls under Activity as the process of bri...

  October 5th, 2020 As school has been starting up online I have started going on walks with my mom in the morning as we did in the mornings during online school at the end of last year. It has been really nice and having this consistent exercise is undoubtedly good for me. However, it is a stark reminder of the fact that I am not at school in person as due to how far away from school I live it is not realistic for me to have time to go on walks before school during a regular year. It has been very hard for me to continue online school while others are going in person (with many changes from last year, masks, distancing, barriers, one-way hallways, no lockers, no using the fridge or microwaves, and lunch is only allowed outside and very far from others) but it doesn’t seem like going in person would be the best thing for me at this. My brother is at pretty significant risk of health issues if he happened to get covid so we are all being extra cautious for his sake. While online sch...

September 26, 2020 We have finally gotten the dirt that will be going in the planter boxes delivered (It was delivered one week ago). It was delivered on the back of a huge truck that drove up and dumped it all in a big heap on our driveway. I had previously not really understood the scale of what 11.5 cubic yards of dirt would look like. It was about 25,300 pounds of dirt (or 11,475 kg) and the resources that we had to move it were 1 wheelbarrow, 3 shovels, my brother, my sister, and me. Needless to say, we are not nearly done yet. It is a ridiculously large amount of dirt to move but we are making progress (however hard it may be to see) and I am excited to see us getting closer and closer to having the boxes ready to plant in. This was absolutely an act of action and I believe that it demonstrates learning outcome 4 as we have been working on this project for months and have stayed dedicated to seeing it through to its completion.

August 20, 2020 School usually would have started by now and the initial joy of spending more time at home is starting to run out. However, I have started many new things during this time that I find to be very enjoyable, one of which is baking more often. I have started baking bread and it has been rather delightful. As opposed to going out and trying to find people that I think might be safe and spending time with them my family and I have been very cautious with covid and have found more creative ways to spend our time, my baking was one of these. We have considered the ethics of going out and spending time with others and have come to the conclusion that while it would be very enjoyable it is not the right thing to do as we simply don’t know enough. I dug our old bread maker out from the pantry and have been making lots of loaves and experimenting and as I have learned more I have become more creative with the things that I do with it. I believe that this falls under learning outco...

  July 25, 2020 The boxes have finally been built and soon it will be time to begin filling them with dirt. So far the process has been quite rewarding, the boxes are assembled and I had to dig small-ish  (perhaps 1 ft deep) ditches where the boxes will be resting and set them in them because of how we made them. I really enjoyed this part of the process as it allowed me to just put some headphones in, play some music, and sort of turn my brain off, dig, and just get the job done. It did take a long time and I was extremely sore every day after working on it but it was still very enjoyable. As I was digging I had tasked my brother and sister with putting the final pieces of the boxes together and it was very nice to have all three of us working on different parts of the process because we were able to complete it faster that way. This fulfills learning outcome 5 “Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively” and this step in the process is absol...

June 9, 2020 I have continued the project towards having functioning planter boxes, I have acquired the materials and am working on assembling the boxes. It has been taking much longer to do than I had previously thought it would, partially due to my own mistakes but partly due to the lack of help from my siblings. I have completely taken over the entire construction part of this project which would be nice if there wasn’t so much that needed to be done to put the boxes together. It has genuinely been quite physically draining and I can say without a doubt that this falls under the category of activity. “Physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle” I’m making a garden so we can have fresh fruits and vegetables. I can’t think of anything that fits that description more than this. This also completes learning outcome 4 “Show Commitment to and perseverance in a fieldwork experience.” This has been an ongoing project and will require continued work until it is finally seen throug...

  May 24th, 2020  During this extra time at home my little sister and I have realized some things about our house that we are really not a huge fan of and things that we wanted to improve. One of the biggest things that we realized our house was missing out on was the opportunity to have a large garden. We compiled a list of materials to make planter boxes and ended up planning to make 5 planter boxes that were 8ft by 3 ft that we would make, fill with dirt, and plant assorted things in. As of right now we only have the plans for them but we have spent a lot of time deciding on materials and how we would construct them and what will go in them. We went with a wood frame with corrugated metal sides for the structure of the boxes with a thin wood trip at the top for purely aesthetic purposes. This fulfills learning outcome 3 as I initiated and planned this learning experience and got to work devising plans for it. This falls under Creativity as we had to use creativity when crea...

  April 9, 2020 Well, we’ve been at home for almost 3 extra weeks now and it doesn’t look like things are going to return to normal all that quickly. Lovely. In my extra time at home, I have started going on walks with my mom in the morning. It is something that I find enjoyable to do and Is good for me. We wake up around 7:30, walk around the neighborhood, about 1.5 miles and come home, shower, have breakfast, and start our days. This has been a nice consistent thing in my life which has quickly become full of a lot of uncertainty. It was a nice opportunity to actually have this new time to exercise, I believe that this fulfills learning outcome 1 as I have identified my own strengths and weaknesses and worked towards growth by exercising. 

  March 23, 2020 Creativity  Our school has many different A-Term courses that people can choose from. I opted to be a part of “Exploring Historical, Political, and Geographic Landmarks in London, England” where we would travel to London and do a lot of interesting things there. However, due to COVID 19, we had to cancel the trip. This put me and the other 11 students in it in a rather difficult situation. We had around a week and a half to plan an entire 2 week A-Term course. In this week and a half, we went through tons of ideas ranging from a trip to New Orleans, a leatherworking/boot making A-Term, a photography A-term, and a trip to Austin to explore the art and music scene there. Little did we know that the work that we were doing was not going to matter at all. When we got off of school for spring break, we didn’t return to in-person school and we switched to online, a change which will probably stay for the rest of the year. Even though all of it ended up being for not...

February 13, 2020 Recently I started running again and I started off with a shaky start. You see, I decided that it would be a good idea to go from a few months of no running, to a 4 mile run. I started off fairly strong and was able to keep breathing well and keep up a good pace for the first mile. Things went pretty downhill after mile 2. I’ve learned that I really need to improve my stamina. I’m not too slow but I can't keep running for very long. I am glad that I have started getting into this again and I hope to lose some weight because I’m not too satisfied with my current physical condition. I will try to start going on weekly (at the least) runs and we’ll see where this goes in the future. I believe that I accomplished Learning Outcome 1 (Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth.) during this as I have realized how difficult it is to start running again and so I don’t want to have to restart from a dead stop again so I will try to keep these runs going. I think...

January 16, 2020 Day 8 Today unfortunately is my last day :( I hope that today goes well so that I don’t leave them on a bad note. By now the day is over and I worked with them on money and I was surprised at how many of them there were that didn’t know the names of the coins. I played the same game with them as yesterday. (Telling them to add up to $1.50 and having them show me different ways to do it) and I had all the classics from yesterday 6 quarters, 15 dimes, 150 pennies, 3 half dollars, 2 half dollars and 2 quarters. I had a bunch of struggles with them again today with them remembering which coin was which. I eventually came up with “the smallest coin has the smallest name” unfortunately that one wasn't super clear as many of the kids thought that I meant smallest value. And even more unfortunately I had such a hard time finding any tricks that the kids could use to remember the coins aside from the obvious one quarter is one quarter of a dollar. Unfortunately they di...

January 15, 2020 Day 7 Today was another arts day which was annoying since I only had until 9:15 to work with the kids. However even though I only had a small amount of time to work with them, I still was able to accomplish a lot of stuff. This morning I worked with Mia, Lilia, and Taylor on money. We started with remembering the names of the coins and how much each of them are worth. I then gave them an assortment of coins and had them name all of the coins and tell me how much money it was. Once they got good at that I moved on to flashcards that had coins on them (basically the same thing but they liked it better because they got to hold on to the flashcard when they got it correct.) After that we moved on to the final phase of their training and I went around the circle and had each person tell me a way to get $1.50. We started with Mia saying 6 quarters, then the next person said 2 half dollars and 2 quarters, then we got 15 dimes, 150 pennies 3 half dollars, and then Mia gave...

January 14, 2020 Day 6 Today the kids started off their morning with PF class and during that time I worked with Ms. Taj to learn the Large Bead Frame (similar to an abacus). I am absolutely amazed at how simple and helpful it is. I cannot begin to comprehend why others don't use it to teach math. When the kids came back from PF I worked with 3 of them on a short little “assessment” on how well they knew how to use the Large Bead Frame. The first was very good at it right off the bat, the second struggled and I had to work with her for awhile to get her better at it (unfortunately she still doesn’t completely get it). And when I was giving problems to the third one I felt terrible. The first problem that I gave to her ended with the answer being 14,236 and she told me that the answer was 1 ten thousand, 4 thousands, 2 hundreds, 3 tens and 6 ones. When I asked her how else you would say it (using 8,328 as an example, how you could say it as 8 thousands, 3 hundreds, 2 tens and ...

January 13, 2020 Day 5 Today I started the morning working with kids on how to multiply and divide fractions with unlike denominators. It was such an enjoyable day right from the start as the kids actually got it super quickly!! Once I realized that they knew what they were doing I taught some of them how to cross-reduce and they really enjoyed it and got quite good at it. For probably the first time, I was glad for Ms. Hampton’s (My math teacher at my old school) little song that she gave us to remember how to divide fractions. “Dividing Fractions is easy as pie, just flip the second and multiply” When I was in middle school, she would not stop drilling that song into our heads over and over and over again. So… I taught it  to them, it was helpful but I made sure not to be repetitive with it as she was because then it simply gets too annoying and you begin to dislike it. The kids that I taught today were a combination of students that got it right away and students that I ha...

January 10, 2020 Day 4 Day four, and they still haven’t learned how to divide and that’s making things… difficult. So today I taught kids about Equivalent Fractions and they had a... struggle to say the least. That is definitely something that I will need more practice with teaching that in order to come up with clearer descriptions of how they work. Luckily they had great materials that I could use to teach them. They had little pie slices that I used to show how the size of  2 ⅛ added up to equal ¼ and to show how they were equivalent. Unfortunately it took a VERY long time to get them to sort of understand it. Today I also taught them how to factor some more and then I worked with a few kids on multiplying fractions with unlike denominators and that was certainly a breath of fresh air. The kids got it very quickly and I was able to work with many students because of how quickly they got it. Unfortunately the cooking class didn’t come to the Bissonnet campus today so I had t...

January 9, 2020 Day 3 Today the class that I am with had art/music/PF class in the morning so I only had from 8:30- 9:15 to work with the kids however even this tiny amount of time was really quite helpful. Today in the morning I worked with a kid on rounding (The same thing I did on my first day there). In the 45 minutes that I had I was able to teach her about the same amount of things that I was able to teach them on the entirety of my first day JUST 45 MINUTES! Even though that was literally all I did today for my J-Term (Unfortunately the Art of Cooking bus had to leave before I had a chance to work with them at all after lunch. Today felt like such a waste though because I spent all of it with Art of Cooking. Buuuuut, I made some great steak! I am kind of disappointed in how things worked out and I feel really bad for letting the teacher down and not being there today and tomorrow I will have to leave on the bus at 11:30 so I will not be able to teach in the afternoon Toda...

January 8, 2020 Day 2 Today I helped kids work with factors and I again I expected too much of them. I keep on just assuming that they know things, such as division and that ends up turning around on me when halfway through the lesson they finally made it clear to me that they didn’t know division. The kids today took far longer to teach due to no fault of their own but just because I could not figure out how to explain factors to them AT ALL. I never realized how difficult of a task it is for teachers to explain things to students and how hard it is to even begin to explain even semi complex topics without visual aids. All this did was further my appreciation for the materials that they use in Montessori mathematics and honestly I am now equally amazed and disappointed in my old school. I am amazed that they managed to get kids to sort of understand math without these incredibly helpful materials, but I am also disappointed that they don’t use the materials that they use here. I ...