Spring Break

Phew! I can't tell you what a consistent 9 hours of sleep each night can do for a person ... or maybe I can. I feel great! Here are some pressing activities on my plate:

1. Watch cheesy bad movies on Netflix streaming (Blackbelt Jones, Cherry 2000, ....)
2. Read book(s) (Saving Fish from Drowning)
3. Catch up on grading (test corrections)
4. Sign up for the Digital Electronics STI workshop for PLTW (soooooo excited)
5. Prep myself for the Cardboard Chair Project for my engineering class (design, test, create a cheap durable cardboard chair for a dorm room ... cool "hook" video)
6. Prep myself for my PBL unit (project based learning) of trigonometry
7. Take a blanket out to local parks and laze around and soak up sun and outdoors
8. Go to Marfa, TX (Thursday)
9. Do my "train" project on Inventor for IED (I'm doing the homework with my students this year ... keeps me honest)
10. Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles (hiyawake puzzles my new favorite)
11. Get ready for the PLTW certification visit on 4/1/11 (eek! hope that's not portentous)
12. Sleep more than 7 hours a night (or did I mention that already?)
13. Get my IED students to write thank you e-mails for a recent speaker/friend that came to visit and talk about his engineering experiences. (It was useful to send my students THIS e-mail as a primer):

Hey! Let's be green (and timely since it's Spring Break). Here is your EXTRA homework to turn in to me NEXT Monday 3/14/11 .... and by that I mean 3 days from now .... OVER spring break.

Please send me an e-mail, either with an attachment of a thank you card for Mr. H., or your thank you words inside the e-mail message.

I will then gather them all up together in one e-mail and send them along to him.

Thank YOU for saying more than just "thank you for coming to speak to us". Maybe indicate what you liked or found interesting or learned or whatever.

Example, here's my "thank you" to YOU, my IED students:

Dear IED students of 2010-2011,

I love teaching you because you're so creative and make me think of new things and ways to teach you. I also love that you're excited about the various things we do and learn. I look forward to your questions because they make me think through the why's and how's of various concepts.

Signed,

Ms. ______


I look forward to your thank yous for Mr. H.
Ms. _____


(I've gotten 6 out of 12 back so far)

Anyway .... must go exercise with my other latest craze (as of 4 weeks).