Fund Raising

For anybody who might be mostly interested in this for what we do in the classroom, you can probably skip this...
A local Bob Evans restaurant is hosting a fund raising night for the Red Cross chapter that I volunteer with on Monday 10/13 2008(Columbus Day). They will donate 20% of their proceeds between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. to anybody who presents the flyer. You can grab the flyer here, and print it out if you'd like to support our local chapter's disaster response efforts.

Extra Mile Updates

We are off to a huge start this year. In September, during the 2nd week of school, we raised money for the National 9/11 Memorial in NYC. We raised enough to allow the club to purchase a paver stone for the Memorial area, and are looking forward to getting the paperwork filled in for that purchase.

Last Saturday, we participated in the Loudoun County Red Cross' Ride for the Red. Ride for the Red is a motorcycle ride, and has become a very popular fund-raiser for many chapters. The students attending helped register more than 100 bikers, and the estimated total looks to be about $13,000! This is a huge amount, and very much needed for our chapter disaster response!


And we're heading straight for Make A Difference Day, starting this Friday night at our Homecoming. Can Man is coming (as you can see from the photo, he's actually already here!), and only our students can bring him. Our goal is to raise enough money for 6 $10 gift cards for family food baskets, and at least 3 baskets with food for the food bank by 10/28.

Making Brownies

For the last 2 Fridays, I have asked people to support the staff at the Red Cross call center by making a baked item. The first Friday, we had brownies made by the Gourmet Foods students, and last Friday, the students in my Functional Academic class baked. And of course, the teacher in me just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make this more of a learning experience. And so, I created a "How Many Different Kinds of Brownies" can you make activity. We've done some logic charts, and solved a few word problems based on the same concept.
The worksheets for the lesson are on the wiki. Scroll down to "Logic", because that seemed to fit best as a topic header.
One worksheet has the problem (You have 2 brownie mixes, 1 kind of icing, 2 kinds of add-ins... How many different kinds of brownies can you make?). The other set of worksheets is a data recording sheet, and a data collection mat with manipulatives. We cut out the manipulatives (pictures of the items they can use to make the brownies), and put them in the slots on the data chart, then recorded the information on the data sheet. It worked fairly well, and I think the concept has some possibilities.

Today

Today is 9/11. 7 years and four and a half hours ago, I was sitting at a computer in a small room in a school. Today, I am again sitting at a computer in a small room in a school. It is a different school, and I am definitely not the same person I was then.

Within hours of the disaster, I was in a Red Cross Shelter helping keep watch over children who had parents working in DC. Many of them were unable to get home at their normal hour because of the events. On 9/12, I was assigned to the Pentagon as an administrative assistant to one of the job directors. I did whatever needed doing: rolling socks in the Mass Care tents, hanging up cards, poems & pictures from students and families around the world, and getting food for those that couldn't leave their duty stations. I was there for just under 3 weeks; I taught every day, and worked at the Pentagon at night.

Today, I spoke to a small group of students at my current school about my experiences working at the Pentagon, and helped the students in the community service club I run sell red, white & blue braided strands in rememberance of those that not only lost their lives, but those that worked so hard to help everybody pick them up again.

And tonight, before I go home, I will put on the gray & white Disaster Services vest I wore at the Pentagon, and go answer phone calls from people evacuating because of Hurricane Ike. I am proud to be part of the American Red Cross for the last 22 years.

Goal Setting

I mentioned in an earlier post that the students would do another project related to their portfolios after finishing the license plates. We've done those, and so I decided to have the students set some goals. The message I want to send to them is that life takes planning. Live your dream, but be sure you plan how to make it work. To that end, I had them take the goals they had written, and use a thesauraus (we used Merriam-Webster's on-line) to look up words that mean the same things as their goals. Not only was this a good vocabulary exercise, but they were able to see words that betetr shaped their desires in life. After they had a list of words, we copied them into Wordle, and created "Goal Wordles". Here are a few that we've created:

License Plates

This school year, I am teaching a supervised study session. It is a 90 minute block period that is designed to provide students with special needs support and time to complete homework. Parents are not always able to help students, and in some cases, the materials that a student needs to complete a project may not be available. My school decided that this year, since the class is graded and earns an elective credit, we would have the students create portfolios. For those that have known me for awhile, you probably already know that I have my classes make portfolios or scrapbooks frequently! I am also excited because we have the technology to do the portfolios electronically.
So far, we have done a license plate and we'll start another activity during the next class. The instructions for the license plates were to find pictures using Flickr Creative Commons, and use 6 letters or numbers to describe who you are. Here are some of the license plates that we did:

Just in time for a new year...

I really thought I had broken the pattern last year. You see, since 1997 (my second full year of teaching), there have been major disasters every 2 years that have impacted the attendance area of my school in some fashion. I don't remember what happened in 1997, but here's a list from 1999 forward: Hurricane Floyd, 9/11, Hurricane Isabel, and ending with Hurricane Katrina. And so, last August I started biting my nails. I was wondering if I would be teaching during the day, and doing Red Cross work in the evenings as I have done for most of these events. I waited... I just knew something was going to happen... And nothing did. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I went to the Innovative Teacher conference in Seattle, and came back. Still nothing. Woo hoo! The pattern was broken.

And then Gustav showed up. With his friend Hanna. I guess they think that since we didn't have anything last summer, we need a double dose this year.

School opens on Tuesday. Gustav is scheduled to arrive on Monday. Fortunately, I think I'm prepared for the first day.

I am also hoping and praying that Gustav gets bored and decides that New Orleans and that whole area isn't worth visiting. I hope the residents there have been evacuated safely... I've heard from one set of friends, who are safe and outside the area. One last wish, and then back to planning for the start of school: If you've been evacuated from the area, and not been able to reach family & loved ones, please make sure you register with Red Cross Safe & Well so your family and friends can find you.