Master's Student!!

This is Brian. We are friends from dance.

Today, Brian defended his master's thesis and I watched! It was actually pretty fun, plus he provided Einstein Bagels afterwards which is a good enough reason for me to be there. I learned how defending a thesis works, and I learned some stuff that applies to my life too, from his thesis. His thesis was on foreign language (Japanese) vocabulary acquisition through multimedia. In other words, does it help to not only read a definition of a word, but also to see a picture or a video? Yeah, so it got me thinking about teaching math, because math is really a language in and of itself, and how I can appeal to different learning styles through multimedia presentations once I am teaching... and it served as a reminder that repetition is not necessarily the key to learning... but repetition in different forms might be better. Saying that to solve an equation you need to get x alone 300 times might have less effect than saying it, doing a problem, demonstrating it with video/pictures/objects, and getting the students to do it themselves...

End ramble.

Kids!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

A bunch of us were up at Ben and Amy's and the kids were just being so cute. I thought I'd video some of their antics and post them here.

April Fool's Video

For April Fool's day, I made this video with Justin. It was a lot of fun, and Nikki was a good sport about videotaping us even after she got soaking wet. Hehe thanks Nik.

An Overdue Update

Well, here's the scoop: twelve of us went on an awesome vacation, thanks to my awesome parents. Here's who went: Mom and Dad, me, Ben (my brother) and his wife Amy and his two kids Jake and Elly (age 2 and 1, respectively, at the time), and Erica (my sister) and her husband Doug, and Alif (my brother) and his wife Nikki and kid Justin (age 11 at the time). So I made a video of a bunch of pictures from the trip. Yay! Here it is. This is the first of hopefully a few good updates.

Game and Happy Christmas!

Here is some "game" Amy sent me which I am doing out of boredom... you have to use the first letter of your name for everything.

1. What is your name: Heather

2. A 4 Letter Word: Howl

3. A Boys Name: Harry (Potter!)

4. A Girls Name: Hannah (Abbott)

5. An Occupation: Healer (at St. Mungo's)

6. A Color: Hot pink

7. Something you wear: Hats

8. A Beverage: Hot Chocolate

9. A Food: Haggis (maggoty)

10. Something found in the bathroom: Hair potion

11. A place: Hogwarts

12. A Reason for being late: Horcrux Hunting

13. Something you shout: "Hold your hippogriffs!" - Hagrid, Order of the Phoenix, p. 20

Bye Bye!!

Well! Long time no blog.

So first of all, I competed in many, many dance competitions during the past month or so. Maybe I'll post videos later. But here is a picture of me and my parter (this is posed, but we actually do this in our foxtrot routine).



Now secondly, I had to say goodbye to Keith yesterday. She's been in Utah about 2 1/2 months, maybe a little less. So much has happened since she came. I mean, to her, primarily. She got her learner's permit and then her driver's license, which is awesome! Also she got her license 10 days after her first time driving... isn't that crazy? I never knew someone could learn to drive that fast. But she did! Here's a picture of us together after one of my dance competitions.


And so yesterday, I took her to the airport. She's never flown before, so I talked her through everything - security, concourses, finding your gate, getting on the plane, little blue screens to find your connecting gate, etc. Then she went through security, and I watched her go, and almost cried. It was like watching my child leave home and hoping she is ok. But I know she will be.... <3

Math, math, math

I've been teaching math nonstop. I am student teaching at Provo High School, which is about 5 minutes (driving) from my house. Today was the end of the quarter, thank goodness! I've been so stressed out, because I have kids coming up to me every day, trying to find out how to get their grades up (particularly to pass the class). I've been handing out test retakes, private tutoring students, and correcting makeup tests, quizzes, and homework. I got so stressed out from this and other things that I was starting to have ulcer symptoms again (I was having horrible symptoms during finals week last April). So now I'm taking Pepcid AC every day and I'm feeling better.

By the way, the bulldog is the mascot for Provo High. That's why it's on this post.