FLEX Camp

Long time no blog….

I couldn’t blog last week.  Every bit of writing that I did had to be concentrated on my portfolio.  While, admittingly, I did not concentrate as much as I should, I did avoid blogging, which is something I would enjoy much more than writing about how much I have learned in a program.  I sometimes felt like I was writing a “how awesome am I?” paper, and let’s be honest, I know I am awesome, but documenting awesomeness is sometimes more difficult than an upload.  I had to write about instruction, learners, content, professional development and research and what I have done in each of those five fields since being at Elon.  I know that I am not the first person to do this.  I know that there are many people who have passed and failed before me.  However I think the process needs some revision.  I understand the point of writing the synthesis papers and providing documentation.  While I sucked at it, I get it.  I wished, however, they provided more pointed questions to better guide the process, similar to National Boards.  The whole process is similar to National Boards, but a lot more vague. 

It was also due the week of camp at Elon.  We held a camp through my masters program for gifted students.  I worked with my fellow math nerd Liz.  We helped students make awesome Rube Goldberg machines, simple machines put together to make illogical, yet working machines to accomplish a task.  They could feed a dog, capture a dinosaur or land a frog on a lilypad.  They all chose not to deal with the cool jumping frogs we bought.   The kids were amazing but I came to the realization…I love high school.  I don’t know what I am going to do when I have kids. Thank goodness that is not happening for a long time (just so rumors don’t start….)

I enjoyed camp because I got to guide investigations with little to no time limit.  The problem with class is that time is crunched.  Camp it wasn't.  I got to see students in their element learning what they wanted to learn.  You can see my video that I made (YES MADE!) recapping the week: Flex Camp.  You can also watch some of our machines working...for the most part.

Party Animals

Garage

Nuclear Garage Boys

So anyways, we were all wiped from camp each day and writing portfolio entries each night.  When we brought this to the attention of the higher ups the response was “you have known the deadline since you started”.  We always knew it would be due the second week of summer school.   However, as our professor said, it is human nature to work up until the deadline, so why not set it earlier.  It wasn’t that we didn’t have enough time, it was that the deadline was the same time as another deadline….and hello, my name is Carissa and I am a procrastinator.  I work better under pressure.  I personally think that statement is not true for anybody, but we say it because we have all succeeding under circumstances when we worked under pressure.  But I digress….

So anyways….I’ve been writing a lot, just not blogging.