6/21/09

Happy Father's Day!

Ok. So the Spring 2009 semester ended and I successfully completed my Educational Statistics class...somehow. I would like to believe that I have gained enough knowledge to understand the basic in educational statistics, but of course far from being an expert in the field.

I have also completed my student teaching requirements for my state DOE teaching licensure program. After the completion of my application, I'll officially be a licensed teacher in the state of Hawaii. Yay!

Now on to summer school. Summer school for the kids, and summer school for me. When I say kids, I'm referring to the 27 second graders in my class. Yes, I'm teaching a post 2nd grade class for four weeks. Yikes! And summer school for me...a Qualitative Research class and a Mixed Methods class. It's taught by the same professor and the final assignment is the dissertation proposal. Hey, that's great and all...but WHAT IS MY TOPIC!?!?!

I'm STILL juggling different topics. What ever happened to the "I'll have my dissertation topic decided by December 2008"? Oh wells. So here are the ideas that are bouncing around in my head:

* Humor and Learning
* International Schools
* Finland Method
* Karate Training and transfer of skill

Humor is a good topic to do an exploratory case study. There's some literature on humor in the classroom and some empirical studies, but nothing major. I was thinking to do a case study on a teacher who uses humor in the classroom and see what comes up. Maybe even do a case study on my karate sensei? I don't know.

I was thinking International School because that's the whole idea behind me getting my doctorate. I was to eventually create an international school of some sort, so why not do research on it?

That's what got me into the whole Finland Method. Finland is doing something right. I'd like to know what it is. So I was thinking of just looking at the math curriculum in Finland. That'd require me to go to Finland, which is interesting, but would it be feasible?

Finally since I'm a black belt in karate, my classmate, colleague?, suggested I'd do something related to that. Which then turned into an idea of "Are students able to transfer martial arts training knowledge into an education setting?" This would be a case study as well and I would probably interview students and see what they have to say about it.

So...which topic? I better decide PRONTO. The sooner I decide, the sooner I can focus my readings and layout this dissertation proposal.

On a side not, I got a Kindle. It's great. I wish they'd put all my textbooks on Kindle. Then I wouldn't have to lug around 10 pounds of paper~

8/30/08

Oops. I forgot to write yesterday. I was really tired.

Today my karate sensei said something very interesting. The more someone is able to concentrate, the more they can enjoy the fun things. He was saying that if someone can really concentrate on school, work, TV, etc. then they are able to enjoy is more.

8/28/08

I thought I was going to miss a day because I had a paper due tomorrow. But I finished it. It was a terrible paper. The title, "Using Reflection as a Tool to Increase Homework Completion." Blah.

Too bad I'm not in Educational Administration. If I was I'd write my dissertation on about how bad ********'s administration is.

Yesterday I substituted for a SPED teacher. It was upper elementary. So I wasn't too worried. However, once I knew I had to teach this one extremely SPED kid reading, I got nervous. This kid does raspberries randomly, verbalizes random things, etc. I don't know exactly what I did but, he didn't have any outbursts while working with me! He even showed extreme concentration when I was reading. I was amazed. I don't think I'm fit to be teaching SPED though...

I was once told by a parent of twins I used to tutor that I should document my teaching style, but it's hard. Maybe I can hire someone to observe me and decipher what exactly it is that I do. I sometimes feel I have a gift in making a connection with students.

Maybe I can write my dissertation about discipline strategies used in my karate class that can be used in the classroom. Or the effects of karate on a student's academic achievement, concentration, and motivation. I read that in Switzerland, students concentrate on school while they are there, but once they leave school, Swiss people don't think about or deal with academics. Maybe I can investigate the skill of concentration when you need to and relaxing between sessions to enhance the amount retained or academic achievement when concentrating in chunks.