I am also working on my TPAs, but are not going half as well as building my shop. part of it is procrastination, while I also feel they can be tackled once I get closer to finding an internship.
Which leads me to sending an email to principals in the area.

Tonight I gave a good presentation on some of my reflections on Literacy and it's role in my area of focus, the hands-on, or industrial/tech ed. I hadn't finished my formal lesson plan for the presentation because honestly, I told them, my head was straying to other issues of sustainability/longevity for my area of focus. I have to bring something more than an IA credential to the schools, or the certainty of my job, and passion, might end up on the chopping block soon. I might find a nice job in a more affluent district that can support a shop program, but ultimately that wouldn't be in my best interest because reality is much larger than that, and shops are going away.
I improvised my way through my presentation tonight, which is always a good thing to practice once in a while. Especially because I am not in the classroom while I work on my credential, which should be a standard practice throughout. I'll go so far as to saying we need to include teacher training programs in more meaningful ways to real school settings where candidates can get to know their students, and watch first hand how teachers manage a classroom. Students who are interested in a possible teaching career should be able to start work towards this early on in their education, in small quantities at first, but connected and real to the student.

teacher-candidates need to be paid

A friend reminded me of an Einstein principle this morning,

In chaos there is order

the other day in class I couldn't concentrate on anything but how things will need to change if our education system becomes sustainable. I spent a lot of class reading through news articles about Governor Brown's glimpse into the severity of government cut-backs on their way. These will no doubt have tough effects. Really, they are all ready here in all their severity, but the public hasn't fully realized it yet en mass. Things like the inevitability of the Boomers about the flood out of the system, leaving 10's of thousands of positions(the one watching all the kids) basically unfilled because we might come up painfully short on new and lasting teachers.

Recruiting qualified teachers, providing ongoing training for existing teachers, and encouraging them to stay in the profession are some of the biggest challenges in public education today. -ed data

teachers

Trying not to fall too far behind the work for this class. I caved and bought the book, it's an ebook version on www.Cafescribe.com. I'm starting to feel fatigued with National even more. I hear the rhetoric of "fighting content teaching", but the system seems inherently to teach to content and standardized tests. Last week we talked a little bit about the movie, www.racetonowhere.com, about the amount of pointless homework schools are pumping into kids these days. It's all in a trend towards getting everyone ready for college and then the corporate work environment. This makes sense for less than half of the population that graduates from high school each year.
And further, this credential program is a great look into how deep the problem is. Our teachers are being taught mainly through content. There is a student-teaching stint, though I don't think it's long enough to really be effective for first time classroom experience. A huge portion of the classwork here at National revolves around reading and summarizing textbook content. Sometimes I feel like classes are nothing more than a "meet-up" style gathering. Which is great to get together with other teacher candidates and current teachers, get some work done, and share ideas. But we are paying a huge amount of money to do this? This fact if bothering me more and more. Combined with the glacial pace and possible gridlock of the legislative process to effect change in the education system, I find it hard to believe we can train the 10s of thousands of teachers we need in the next decade. I am increasingly finding my thoughts and heart moving towards an entrepreneurial approach to the system.

This is my 6th class at National university to get my Industrial arts teaching credential. I have nailed down my workflow on this website to capture my process and share my ideas and build my shop model that I will take to a public school shop. I got behind on my reflections for TED624 after the first class, so I will pick up with a reflection on the second class.