Super Heroe's Reflection at St. Mary's

Today was the final day at St. Mary's. I really am going to miss the kids a whole lot. Today was by far one of the most best days we have had at St. Mary's. It was superhero day and we all dressed up for the kids to make the environment much more fun. When me and my buddy Matt showed up as Mario and Luigi the whole entire gymnasium erupted and all the kids started going crazy, they all started chanting Mario and Luigi. The older kids and the youngest kids were all going crazy like as if a famous person had just walked into the gym. I was pretty impressed by the welcoming. The kids loved our costumes. I absolutely had an amazing time this year at St. Mary's. I am really going to miss the kids there because they all became very attached to me like most kids do anywhere i go to work. Like everywhere I go when i work with kids the hardest part is saying goodbye and knowing its over and not seeing these kids and how happy they get when they see me every other week. I have always known that i want to work with kids when i start my career but after today I was just saying to myself this is most definitely what i can see myself doing for the rest of my life, there are no words to describe how happy i am when i work with kids. I got to work with the Pre-K today for some time and that was an amazing experience playing with these kids. Their imagination is just amazing. They were some of the cutest kids. If i get an invitation to work there I will defiantly consider it because working with kids is what i know i want to do 110%. I can not wait to make this my career and change the lives of many kids and just enjoy what i do. Even the older kids were having a blast with me today, some of the kids that usually misbehave were even very good. This was a great way to go out at St. Mary's.

Sports are my Life.

Watching the Red Wings game 7 (my team), watching the NBA playoffs on TNT tonight, watching the Yankees game. Sports are a wonderful thing that keep me going. Its like a repeat every night. Morning sports shows, Evening sports shows, and then the games at night. SPORTS=LOVE :)
They are what keep me going in life. Playing them and watching them is what makes the person I am......

Rhesus Monkey Development Experienment

This clip shows me that the baby monkey is going to the wired mother with the milk attached to it very little. This video is very familiar to human child development in many ways as well. But the major monkey mother that the baby monkey was attached to was the cloth mother monkey, this may be because children like the feeling of warmth and comfort over any other variable even including nutrition. A child in development will naturally flock towards comfort and warmth of their mother which is evident here in this monkey experiment. Care giving is very important in social and cognitive development. The monkeys feel most comfortable when they are frightened to flock to the cloth which is the warmth and comfort of the mommy monkey, this changes though as the baby monkey gets older just like with a child's development we become less attached to our mothers comfort and warmth and more attracted to feeding our hunger and feeding ourselves as we get older.

Self Defense Forms

This is a form that shows the kind of feedback I was able to give to my class. I was very pleased with the amount of congruent positive feedback I was able to give throughout my lesson. There were a few times I had to use negative behavior feedback for a few of my students that got a little out of control. Overall my class was very smooth with little problems and I gave more feedback than I had done all year. I was pleased with the amount that I gave back to my students. One thing I would work on is making sure I always have my back in the right direction so that when I am giving feedback I can still keep an eye on the rest of the other students as well.

Also my students had to do a homework assignment as well for self defense. I also assessed my students to make sure they were all getting the concept down of what I was teaching as well. Here is an example of my assessment tool as well as the homework assignment I gave my students for self defense.

Here is a self c-9 form on how I think I did when it came to teaching my self defense unit for lab D. I was very proud of my amount of preparation and I feel that it showed when I taught. It was by far the best teaching experience I had all year long. Based on what I feel that I covered in my teaching self defense I feel that I covered everything that should be done on the self C-9 form. I was very prepared and ready to teach. I was confident and happy to be teaching something that I prepared for. My lesson I feel went very well.

Here is an example of the developing the content that I made for my self defense unit. This information shows me that I used my cues to go along with the tasks I had my students do in class along with the challenges I made for students who felt the activity was very simple. Based on what the information told me it showed that I used my task followed by my cues and then a challenge for students who felt the activity was too easy. The graph based on where the X’s were put shows me a direction the kind of resemble a M letter shape which I believe is a good sequence order for my teaching the content. My task and cues I felt were very clear and understandable for my students to learn the activity.

Here is a time coding form on how well I was able to spread out the time of my activity time and instruction as well as the waiting and management time. After filling out this form I noticed I got 2 out of the 5 points but I was only 1% off from getting activity time which is a huge improvement from all my other teaching lessons. I am very pleased with the amount of activity I supplied for my students and I now know that I am almost getting there and very close to making the percent of activity time for my students. One thing I would like to cut down on is my instruction time, I noticed this number was fairly high but overall I feel that I have showed great improvement since the first teaching lesson. My management and waiting time were very little just have to work on a little more activity and little less instruction for my students.

Lesson plan and Activity progressions for Self Defense

Here is a lesson plan on teaching my self defense unit along with the activity progression worksheet I used to teach my class in self defense. I was very pleased with the way my lesson plan turned out.

Reflection on my teaching Self Defense Unit

My final teaching unit for the year was on self defense. I was very nervous at first when I saw I would be teaching self defense about 4 weeks ago. After 4 weeks of preparing myself and meeting with self defense teachers and other students to learn more about my unit I became more and more comfortable with what I was going to teach to my class. I rehearsed for hours in my dorm so that I would say everything that I wanted to say when it was my time to teach. I worked on this teaching unit for weeks. I had my progressions done and my lesson plan well in advance as well as my visual aids. Meeting with the self defense teacher really helped me a lot in preparing myself to teach for this unit. My reflection on this day was very positive. I have come a long ways since the first day when I taught basketball. The first day I taught I knew nothing about the C-9 form as well as the way I was dressed was nothing like how professional I looked for lab D. I am very happy with how I am progressing as a teacher candidate. I am more confident now but still very shy and need to work on my voice projection. My last lab that I taught I covered everything and more on the C-9 form and I was very proud of myself and the way I prepared for this teaching unit. I was confident and knew what I wanted to say. I was even able to throw some jokes in there as well to loosen up the atmosphere. I did notice I said umm a few times which I want to try and avoid but overall I was very pleased with how far I have come since the first teaching unit in the beginning of the year. I feel that once I can overcome being a quiet person I can do anything that I want to do with the right amount of preparing as well as my work ethic. In lab C I forgot to demonstrate some task as well as give feedback, this time I gave a lot of feedback and I demonstrated every move from different angles as well. I also used intra task variation this time which I was very pleased about and worked out well. One other thing I really rehearsed was if someone acted up in my class what I would do for discipline. I was very prepared for any situation that would occur in my class. I would separate any kids who could not handle being partners and then go from there. Lab D turned out to be a great finish for me and I am very proud of the outcome overall. I would like to just work on being more loud and less shy.

Part 3 teaching video of self defense

Self Defense Video

Teaching Self Defense for Lab D

Coaching My brother

WOW MY BROTHER TRIED OUT FOR THE 13 YEAR OLD ALL STAR TEAM (HES 11). I AM SO PROUD OF THIS KID. HE MADE THE TEAM AS ONE OF THE TOP STARTING PITCHERS. THIS KID IS 11 YEARS OLD PLAYING WITH KIDS IN THEIR TEENS. STRUCK OUT 13 YEAR OLDS IN TRYOUTS, THIS Kid IS A MONSTER.. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BUDDY. THIS IS AMAZING, MY BROTHER IS THE REAL DEAL, WATCH OUT NEW PALTZ RECORDS ARE GOING TO BE BROKE SOON. ALL OF THIS HARD WORK I HAVE DONE WITH MY BROTHER COACHING HIM IS ALL STARTING TO COME TOGETHER, BOTH HIS POTENTIAL AS A PLAYER AND MY COACHING DREAM ARE STARTING TO COME TOGETHER. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK KID I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING......

Just got off the phone with all stars coach. He told me my brother made the team because he was impressed with his pitching and defense and that he has never seen a breaking ball and fastball combined so good for an 11 year old and that he has great poise and potential to be dominant. Again i'm the most excited brother in the world. Love you buddy so much, all that hard work we do together is paying off.

Great Feeling on teaching

I just felt like telling everybody out there who looks at my web page on occasion that I am in a very good mood today. I taught my final lesson for a class and i did a really good job. The lesson went really well and i covered everything that a good teacher would cover. I stayed up for hours rehearsing my lines and what it was that i wanted to say and what i wanted my class to do. I was very confident going into the lesson and i felt it payed off when i taught. This is just a quick blog on how great i feel to have overcome my fears and do a great job. The picture is just for fun since i am in a really happy mood. Hope you all enjoy.

Lab 5 Toy Story at St. Mary's

Today at St. Mary's we had toy story as a theme for the day. In this lab I will discuss which games have been appropriate and which ones may not have and different limitations when assessing the childern and their locomotor skills.


https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AfNgbGiLpOr_ZGhmODY2MnRfMjZoMzY5ZG5jcA&hl=en

Toy Story at St. Mary's

In today’s lab we had toy story as a theme. We did not have the gym today so are alternate was playing outside which was quite a bit different. The kids were much more rowdy. We were able to play our games but some of them were a bit more difficult because some kids who did not want to listen would change the mood for the other kids making it harder to explain the game or play it the right way. When we went down stairs the kids were much better and calmer. I played with the kids and had a good time today. I liked the theme of toy story. I actually dressed up as woody and had a fun time with the effort I put in to dress up and make the kids happy or question who I was or why I was dressed up. I really enjoy working with the smaller kids and to see their expressions when we play the games with them is amazing. I think the change of where we were made it a bit different for the kids to focus but overall they all had a fun time and many of them were out of breath because we had them moving around a lot and doing lots of kicking running and dribbling. I look forward to the last lab when we meet. It has been a great experience at St. Mary’s.

Fresh Baby of Bel Air

This was a show me and my buddy did on the fresh prince of Bel Air. I was Will Smith and my buddy was Carlton.... Had a lot of fun with this and hope everybody enjoys a side of me they usually do not see..... Let me know when you view this what you all think........

Lab 4 Easter at St. Mary's

A look at how some of the kids did with catching and throwing a ball. Lab for Easter at St. Mary's as well as difficulties faced when working at St. Mary's along with some suggestions for those problems.