At my favorite coffee shop, I am reveling in the fact that I am required to journal for EXC 625 at National University. Journaling has been important in my post-college development in every aspect of my life. I would have to say I have my "masters" of reflections with ten years and over ten journals. It is therapy for me. It helps me lay out thoughts, ideas, and emotions, then move them around over time.
I would like to also mark this month, and the end of my third class at National University. With the help of my wife's loving counsel, and diligent personal time spent working on ideas, I have cracked through a barrier I have had with institutionalized education in the last two weeks. Granted, it's a small crack right now. However, I am getting my work done by putting my head down, and hitting the keyboard. I believe that I am reaching this break through because I am gaining confidence in myself and in my ideas; that the education system can take on a new form, a new life, from the wreckage of our current way. Major love to everyone who is a teacher in these times!

The following headers are required by the course

This is a reflection on my past week in my shop and away from Hyde's shop, prior classroom experience, and EXC625 at National University
What have I learned about teaching students at-risk for school failure?
I have learned that we can earn respect from at risk students, as long as you treat them fairly, don't come into the room with your gloves on, smile once in a while, maybe laugh too. They are seeking goodness and life skills, even if they don't know it.

Describe a personal experience or growth area in teaching that you have had this week.
In Last nights class, we presented book content to each other in groups. As I was presenting, I was quickly able to tell a personal experience as an example of a topic that came up as the presentation trickled into comment/discussion. I had been thinking the past week about where I could talk about it and thought I might try to sneak it into my final presentation. By saying it last night impromptu, I am now able to keep my presentation unmodified. This is probably way more than anyone, including my teacher, will ever read, but it's a nice note to myself;)

What have I learned about planning for students with gifts and talents?
I would like to think that all the strategies for General Ed teachers to successfully teach to GATE students would somewhere work. My further thoughts after talking with Bruce are that often GATE students are what I like to call design-minded in their approach to learning something. Take the way we administer math education today, it is the opposite of design-mindedness. It's book-minded, if you will. We crank out people who design houses, machines, computers, skyscrapers, who have had very little experience building things with their own two hands. Of course, there are degrees to everything and shop class still exists. But I am reminded by my mentor at Hyde that our industrial revolution was build by the hands of farmers and their children. Farmers back then could, and had to, fix Everything.

Assess your own actions in the classroom or community to students with exceptionalities.
During my time in SDCs I was approaching the students with a beginners mind, or without formal pedagogy training. However, I did everything I could by giving them a lot of patients. I rarely showed my frustration with developmental exeptions, and strategically showed my frustration with behavioral exceptions.

What have I learned about myself as a teacher and how I will teach students with exceptionalities?
In EXC625, I have learned that I need to stick up for the ideals of exceptional teaching. I have quietly tested the waters of calling foul on the administration of this class. I know it is the right thing to do, but at what cost? However, the financial cost of the class, $1500(fifteen-hundred dollars), says I need to demand excellence.
I have also been pulled to the point of action by the fact that I want to teach industrial arts, we need to teach industrial arts!, and there are no specific programs in the area to produce teachers. I still think National is important for my professional development, but I am less and less convinced that I need to give them $25,000(twenty-five thousand dollars) to work towards earning my teaching credential. And frankly I am not sure they are sure they are worth it. I have heard from National University no less than 4-5 paths to getting your teaching credential in the state of California, including one that involves taking a "foundations of education" test to test out of all of the classwork, as I understand it. Obviously they didn't dwell on that option very long.
I have begun to reach out further into the teaching community in the last week. I met and shared ideas with a math teacher from SJUSD. I made contact with the shop teacher at Sunnyvale Middle School. and I am doing a lot of personal work learning about the mentor relationship, which is a personal pursuit since this role is very rare in our society.

What is the most important message I learned from this week’s assigned work?
It is very important to be aware of the huge variety of exceptions so that we can better assess our approach to interacting with the student in the most effective way.

After studying about students with exceptionalities, I feel passionate about . . .
I take students with exceptionalities very seriously. These are the students that need a lot of extra resources, and if we invest early enough, we can try and avoid the problem of limited resources in the future.
I believe there is a huge effectiveness gain in developing vocational shop environments for all students to participate in more. Further, I believe most of the student population with thrive in these environments, where otherwise they would be excluded as exceptions in the classroom.

On what do I need to focus and perhaps improve?
I need to get better at being bold, and sharing ideas of how to be more effective. The school system, from students, admin, teachers, and teacher training, has no other path but reform. I feel like as the economic situation seems stable for now, people are starting to go back to sleep. From what I understand, next year's budget is a big ole question mark(?).

In what areas am I confused or need additional help?
I need a clear path to my industrial arts teaching credential via an internship. I am confused as to what classes I need and what classes I don't. I am also confused how to go about legally pursuing an internship opportunity at a middle school. My current relationship with the shop teacher at Hyde is informal, but it is obvious that we want to orchestrate a smooth and effective hand-off. How do I do this without it being called nepotism?