The Adventure begins!

I made it out to San Francisco and have started my professional development days at De Marillac Acadamy. Next week I start my Vincentian orientation and after that I start my full time volunteer job helping with 4th graders and technology at the school! Its all very new to me an am realizing a lot about myself and how different a school environment is compared to a tech environment.

I am dealing with it all and I think will do well with the kids once I learn procedures but the one thing I don't think I will ever get used to is the WORDINESS of the atmosphere. I am used to tasks, numbers, important information, and a "down to the point" ideas. I am finding in the teaching world there is a lot of words and ideas given and then you have to process it all and come out with the end idea for the whole speech. This is very stressful as an engineer, but hopefully I will learn to deal with it.

I am not a man of few words, but I like to think that I pick my words cautiously when speaking to a large amount of people to make sure my point is well emphasized. Its a new learning experience, that's all I have to  say about that.

Being an engineer in a middle school (and 4th and 5th grade) environment, I think a lot of teachers and administrators have noticed some uncertainty in the way I am at the school. It's not so much that their is uncertainty, but rather the most basic things I need to understand about teaching aren't being discussed because to everyone else this is second nature. So many of the topics we have been talking about is high level discussion, improving your teaching skills, and how to plan your curriculum better. I know that I will learn how to teach and support soon, but its just stressful and frustrating how "green" I feel. Good new is though that I am going to teach an enrichment course and I think I will base it on basic engineering projects and experiments :)

Along with professional developement during the day, I have been exploring at night. I have been to the Golden Gate bridge and back (11 mile run with 1000ft climb), to the ocean a few times, Golden Gate Park, and Twin Peaks. Oh yeah and I went to AT&T Park on Monday and saw the San Francisco Giants loose to the New York City Mets too. You can see all of my pictures from these adventures in the links below.

My First Adventure in SF
Bike Adventures in SF