Cable Car In The Classroom

What do I do at Teacher's College? Can you believe building things like this. About eight hours of work, by the three of us, went into this cable car. It sports a drive system with a gear ratio of 10:1 (that'll impress the kids).

A Sample Of Alfie Kohn

This is not the video I wanted to show you but the premise is the same. The video I did see however, was Alfie explaining an experiment he performed on the Oprah Winfrey show:

20 kids were asked to evaluate some games and puzzles.
10 of those kids were told they would receive money for each game/puzzle they critiqued.
10 were not told about the money.

When the supervising adult left the children unattended the camera recorded this:

All 10 of the kids that were not offered a reward PLAYED with the toys.
9 out of the 10 kids who were offered a reward DID NOT PLAY with the toys.

The motivation to play with the toys was no longer intrinsic. "No more reward? Why should I continue to play?"

This is Alfie's argument against the use of rewards (aka carrots). What do you think? Bring on the comments.

Mark This Test

Myself, along with 300 other students in the auditorium were given this test to mark. By a show of hands we were asked: who gave this student a mark between 0 and 9. Hands went up. "Who gave this student a mark between 10 and 15". Hands went up. Between 16 and 25? Hands went up. The professor noted: this student could get a mark in the range of 8 to 25 just dependent on who marked it. Why she asked. Some people replied because of the student's handwriting. She then asked "Who here marked words incorrectly because the letter "T" wasn't crossed off? Hands went up. "Who here marked the words correct regardless of the missing cross because they thought they'd give the kid a break? Hands went up. She then posted on the screen the correct spellings of the words and asked us to mark it again. Still hands went up for different marks. Albeit, the margins were closer now. But honestly, different scores with the answers right in front of us. Then the culminating question: Did anyone notice that on a test scored out of 25 there was only 24 words posted? Perhaps ten hands went up.

I wonder if it was strictly coincidence that the student's name on this mock test was Chris?

The Ultimate Game

Evening practice for the Queen's Ultimate Frisbee team. It made for some interesting photos.

On The Fence

My new friend John Bos and I tried our hand at Fencing. We had a blast but are sad to say we couldn't commit to it. Our schedule wouldn't allow us to participate enough to make it worth our while. En Garde!

Awesome Teaching Video

This video was shown first thing in class today. It got me really pumped about teaching. It eases my mind to know that I'm headed in the right direction and I hope this means I'll have a job for years to come.

GREAT NEWS!!

I received great news this morning that my placement school is Cawthra Park Secondary School. For those who don't know, I've been waiting almost two months now wondering if I'd even had a placement in the Peel Board. The board I so desire to teach in.

Kids on Kingston Harbour

Beautiful weather after my first day of class led me to the waterfront to shoot some photos. These kids were english-speaking migrants from Montreal. One kid actually dumped a used bottle of Gatorade on another forcing a retreat into the water.