WARNING to anyone looking to do sophomore or junior field.

If you live on campus and don’t own a car the best and most logical option would be to apply for a public school in Jersey City. Well think again. Before our fall semester ended I applied to do my junior field during the winter break for two reasons one I live in JC and two I work and go to school fulltime, which leaves me with no time for anything. I had it planed out perfectly. I applied early and I was going to use one of my paid vacation weeks so I can complete the 40 hrs during that week. Well, that plan fell apart quickly. Jersey City’s human resources department took forever with the paper work and didn’t respond to my application until about 4 day before school started. So I used those 4 days and got about 18 hrs done and the experience was fun.

Ok so I thought that since I got about half way through the 40 hrs I would be ok doing a few hours here and there between work and school. Yea right it couldn’t be that easy. A week after my first day I received a call from the department of education. I was told that I could not return to the school until I had taken a physical (that includes a blood test, just in case you’re scared of needles) and without having been finger printed. I thought to myself no problem I can do that, so I asked the lady on the phone how long would it take for all that to clear and her response was and I quote, “Who knows.” Well needless to say I applied for Hudson Catholic, which is a private school in Jersey City. So if you’re looking to do any field experience in JC and you’re pressed for time, think twice.

Technology in the classroom

The video we saw in class definitely opened my eyes to a bunch of new ways to use technology in the classroom. If teacher would have used unconventional method like those to teach when in was in HS I would have loved it. The only time I touched a computer when I was in HS was at home. I did take a computer class but all the things the instructor taught I already knew and most of the time I knew more about computers than the teacher. Come to think of it why would the school have a teacher that knows nothing about computer teaching such a class, that like having someone that knows nothing about baseball coaching the school’s team.

This semester I’m doing my junior field and I’m doing it at the HS I went to. I was so surprised to see that the school is using more technology than they use to. The teacher I was observing use PowerPoint, which was non-existent when I was there, its like they moved from the Flintstone age to the Jetson age. One of the days I visited the students were working on their ends of the semester projects, which was their own PowerPoint presentation for class. It good to see that the school is taking some interest in assimilating technology into the classrooms and into teaching.