A Very Happy Day

Friday was graduation day for my student
teachers. (Don't they look like true professionals?! :-) I was so proud of them!

Although it was the very last class session I would teach at MSU before graduating with my Ph.D., it it was still a day filled with little happinesses for me. Dr. Fendler began the morning by giving a nice speech to the class about the importance of developing "generosity of spirit" in our teaching careers. (Hmmm, I think I need to do some serious improving in that area). She then presented me with a bouquet of flowers as a token of appreciation for my service to the world language program at Michigan State.

One of my student teachers created a parody about their internship experience this year that was based on the One Semester of Spanish Love Song. (You have to watch the video first in order to fully appreciate the parody!)

Several other students had prepared "paper plate awards" for everyone in class, including me! Someone captured my reaction when they read it aloud:















Here is the award they gave me:

I was surprised and humbled by the allusion.

In order to fully understand the remainder of this post, you first need to take the True Colors Survey. (It is only 5 questions long. Wait for all the flashing to quit, then drag the numbers into the circles.)

Mouse over the bar graph that will appear at the end in order to see a very basic interpretation of the results. If you want more details, take a few minutes to read through Jennifer Niskanen's True Colors Pages. For those of you who REALLY want the information to be "all about you, and only about you" scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the colors that apply to you.

My student teachers took the True Colors survey at the beginning of the year. It gave us some new perspectives on our relationships with one another (and why our relationships with certain people sometimes break down). It also provided us with quick language we could use to help us describe problems and sketch out potential solutions. It influenced our interactions deeply.

(This is their visual representation of some of the key characteristics of the various colors.)

Consequently, it was incredibly amusing to me to see them appear in my class on the last day wearing these shirts, and, because I am definitely part blue, it was also very touching to be presented with my very own t-shirt. It captured our journey together very poignantly!

My class even gave me a standing ovation when I was introduced as their instructor at Convocation!

(Team Advanced Low refers to the fact that student teachers are now required to demonstrate that they have achieved Advanced Low Proficiency in the language they intended to teach in order to be certified.)

Meanwhile, a student who was not even in my class stopped me in the hallway to express his appreciation for my work on our class wiki, explaining that the materials on the Getting a Job page had been helpful to him in constructing his portfolio and preparing for interviews.

I could go on and on about the surprise e-mails I received from former student teachers, as well as several professional invitations that also coincidentally appeared on that same day . . . not to mention an impromptu invitation to dine with friends that evening.

It was a wonderful day--one that restored a lot of confidence, one that reminded me that it is really true that you grow to love those you serve, one that suggested that the Lord is intervening in my life more than I might suspect, and one that encouraged me to believe that maybe I am making more of a difference than I realize.

Quantum Dots

I just finished reading an article on Quantum Dots. It sparked a number of thoughts, including the idea that this is just one example of the kind of a world for which we are preparing our students. Of particular interest to me was the way that the following concepts were represented:

1) The exchange of capital – What if Bowers hadn't been willing to make THREE separate batches of dots for McBride? What if Associate Professor Sandra Rosenthal got irritated that he was using her lab, her equipment, her resources to make dots for some other student? Notice the fact that all the students were from the same lab . . . so the physical structure of the lab potentially intensified the interactions among the various students because they are all in closer, more bounded proximity. Wonder if, like atoms, as people collide repeatedly and with more frequency, it increases the energy between them, intensifies the momentum of their thinking? I think that could be part of the magic of the NFLRC . . . bounded space, intensified collisions of people and ideas . . . yields increased energy and momentum . . . plus there is always the issue of increased access to resources as a result of the pooling of people.

2) The concept of transference – The student who brings stuff from a completely unrelated context (parents' summer cabin) into the lab, which fertilizes another students' thinking and he begins to consider using the Minwax in a new way. Also, note that each student had different interests, but the lab provided a point of common connection . . . a physical nexus for the convergence of disparate ideas.

3) The concept of extrapolation – "Such a fundamental change could open up a wide range of new possibilities, such as making almost any object into a light source" . . . now consider the importance of light throughout history in a wide range of contexts, then extrapolate from the prediction above . . . if any object could become a light source . . . think about new applications, marketing, ART! Think if you could mix that stuff with your paint! Now, think about problems such applications would create (because every new technology comes with its problems—that law of opposition again) . . . and if you could anticipate them and begin working on solutions now . . . and think what a great exercise it would be for students to think about these concepts . . .