Traveling Home

6/23/2024:

We left Rochester, Minnesota at 6am. We waited until daylight to start traveling because we have gotten to the age where we don’t like driving in the dark. We were surprised by how much flooding there was in Iowa! We stopped in Wayland, IA for gas at a Flying J. Don drank some Muscle Milk and I had cookies for breakfast. As we headed south, it kept getting hotter! We arrived in Paducah, KY around 4pm and decided to stop for the night. We got a room at the Comfort Inn for $88 off of Hotels.com. Then we went to Sam’s Club and filled up with gas. For dinner, we stopped at Culver's. After dinner, we went to the waterfront and walked along the beautiful painted murals.

6/24/2024:

We left Paducah, KY around 6:40 in the morning. We hit a lot traffic around Knoxville so we stopped for lunch at Culver’s. Then 30 minutes later, we stopped at Bucees for gas in Kodak, TN. Then we hit road construction all the way home. Instead of taking 25 to Greenville, we stayed on I-26 all the way to Woodruff and came home the back way. It was so hot when we got home (94F compared to the 53F when we left Minnesota). After we unpacked, we went to dinner so the house could cool off. Then we went into the kitchen (that is still a disaster area) and covered the air vents with cardboard so the AC wasn’t cooling a room that we couldn’t use. Finally, around 10pm, we decided to call it a night!

My Favorite Place

In Give Me Serenity! From Sioux's Page, Sioux asks

“What is your favorite place? Why does it draw you?”

This was really hard for me because we do a lot of traveling. We love going to new places and finding new things. We also like revisiting places we enjoyed. When I was thinking of all of the places we have been, I tried to decide which one was my favorite and I couldn’t do it. Then I realized why.

My favorite place is my home. Even though we travel a lot, I always look forward to coming home. Many people like their comfort food but I like the comfort of my home. We do a lot of traveling to many different places and I love traveling too but there is no place like home. I love sleeping in my own bed and being surrounded with all of my familiar things. I know how my internet works, my TV and all the channels that I like to watch, I can cook the foods that I like or go to restaurants that I’m used to.

I know what to expect when I’m home. I know where my grocery stores are and the food that I want to buy. I know my friends are near me and I will be able to see them. Familiar places are all around me and it is a comfort to me.

When we travel, I never know what to expect. I don’t know how the place we will sleep will be. Will it be clean? Will I find the bed comfortable? Will I be able to adjust the temperature? Will I feel safe?

Seeing new places is fun but I don’t know what to expect when we get there. What will we do? Will I like it? Will it be fun? What will the weather be like? Will it be expensive? Will we be able to find places to eat?

The actual traveling to places can be an adventure too. Will there be a lot of traffic? Will we find gas stations when we need it? Will the weather be nice while we are traveling?

Even though I don’t know what to expect, it is still fun to go on adventures but it is also great to come home.

This would be a great lesson to do with students. By answering this question, you also might get insight into their lives. By opening up a conversation with them about their lives, you could develop a better rapport with them. Your interest into something personal about them will help throughout the year as the students learn to open up to you more and this will also help with discipline in the classroom.

Where is your favorite place? Please share.

Image: 'Tunisia-4634 - Storks are everywhere'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22490717@N02/7863891754
Found on flickrcc.net

Learning at Home

In So How Could I Still Teach My Students If School Was Cancelled? from Learning Is Messy - Blog, Brian wrote,

“Think of all the learning time being lost by those students already on leave because of the H1N1 flu issue. What if this did become more widespread and we did have many students out of school for a week or more? My school district has already informed us that if even 1 student is diagnosed at our school with H1N1 then they would close that school for 5 to 7 days AND those days don’t have to be made up at the end of the school year. That’s a lot of lost learning time AND lots of free time on the hands of kids that may lead to other issues.”

I began to think about how I could teach my class if we were out for an extended period of time. I remember hearing about ways that a friend was preparing to teach in China when SARS was spreading around the country. Now would be a good time to think about this before it actually happened and to prepare for it too.

I would have all my students get a gmail address and know how to access their email from any location. If my students didn’t have a home computer, this would enable them to access their email at the local library or other locations too.

Students would need to know how to use Google Docs and access/upload documents.

Students would create a blog to share their ideas/thoughts/feelings.

Students would learn to use twitter and plurk so they could contact me in real time if necessary in order to ask questions. This is another opportunity to talk about online safety and not sharing personal information online. Also good to talk about online etiquette.

I love wikis, so I would prepare my procedures/lesson plans on a wiki to share with my class. Students would go to this wiki each day to find out what their assignment for that day would be.

I would give a variety of assignments that students could choose from according to their ability levels and interests. If students have a choice, they tend to feel more motivated to complete the assignment.

Students would be able to complete individual assignments or group work and turn them in on Google Docs or the wiki. There would be no excuses that “my dog ate my homework.”

I also would encourage students to explore online and look for other “tools” that we could use for class. Some students may feel motivated by this because I encouraged them to try this. This may help too if they are bored because they are not in school.

Students could also look at the goals of the assignment and suggest other ways they would like me to assess their knowledge online. Students love to have input and they will respect me more if they know that I value their input.

These were just some of the things I thought of but if you have any other good suggestions, please let me know. I think this would be successful if students were out of school for an extended period of time.

Original image: 'Desk' http://www.flickr.com/photos/83542829@N00/3025287113 by: William Hook