Let’s Celebrate Safely.

Yet another fire.

The Quail Fire is right on the other side of the mountains that boarder the south end of the Salt Lake Valley.  It’s burning right outside the town of Alpine, in Utah County, and they’ve had to evacuate 80 homes in the foothills.

I took these pictures from the park that is just a couple blocks from my house.

The governor had to call in the National Guard because all the other firefighters are busy at other fires.  I just want to thank all those people that are sweating their butts off trying to keep the entire state from burning up.

WE NEED SOME RAIN! so these people can get a rest.

Thematic Photographic 202: Series.

I’ve been working on this series for over a year now, it started out by accident.  I was just taking pictures of the construction next to the Chevron I worked at and after a month I noticed I had several shots from basically the same spot.  So I started taking them from that spot on purpose.

You’ll notice that not all the pictures are of the same quality.  Most of them were taken with my good camera, the Nikon digital SLR, but at times all I had on me was either my point-and-shoot or the camera on my phone. 

The series isn’t complete yet, the building is supposed to be finished and ready for occupation by the end of this month.  Then I’ll post the completed sequence.  But, for now, since this theme came up, I’m showing what I’ve got so far.

For more “Series” pictures, click on the banner below.

Drawback, and a benefit.

There’s good and bad taking over a classroom from a person who is leaving the teaching profession.

• Good:  You get all the cool stuff they leave because they don’t plan on using it again.
• Bad: You have to go through all the crap you’ll never use to get to the good stuff.

I spent a few hours up at school today going through my new classroom and finally got all the crap I don’t want out of there, and organized the stuff I’m keeping.  Feels good to have that taken care of.

I also met with my student-teacher for next year.  I’m part of a program through the University of Utah that pays math-teachers-to-be to spend an entire year with a mentor teacher.  She will be there from day-1, for 2 of my classes, until the last day of school.  It’s a gradual release program, at first she will just be there observing me as I set up the classroom expectations and procedures.  Once things get going, she will start interacting more and more with the class; assisting me, co-teaching, teaching mini-lessons, taking over a whole class here and there, going solo, until the the last term where she will take over every aspect, just like a regular student-teacher.

I really wish all student teaching included the beginning of the school year, I certainly wish I had gone through this kind of program.  It took me a really horrible first year of teaching to realize the importance of the expectations and procedures set up at the beginning of the school year.

Another one bites the dust.

Back in ‘96 the building I went to high school in was torn down and replaced with a new building.

Now the high school my sister-in-law and a good friend went to is facing the same fate.  The new Olympus High School is already being built, so my friend and I went by to get some pictures of the old building, before it’s gone.

If you’re interested in seeing the pictures I got, here’s the link.