More Experimentation With Beading 20% Project

More Experimentation With Beading 20% Project

This week I went out to Michael's with some coupons and bought some new beads, fixings, and wire. I discovered that the stretchy elastic only works for bracelets on necklaces the weight of the beads and the necklace pendant tends to pull the elastic stretching and exposing the clear material in an unattractive way. The previous necklace I made I used some thin left over wire my dad had around the garage but that has run out so I researched online to see what the best wires were to use for beaded necklaces. 

This is what I found:

"Tiger Tail"-A flexible beading wire made out of strands of metal. Comes in many different colors and thicknesses. This is the one I decided to try out based on some advice online and from the sales clerk at Michaels.

However there are many other styles of beading string and wire materials this website provides a detailed description of some of these various materials including: Silk, Nylon, and Monofilament. Check it out for yourselves at: Learn About Bead Stringing Materials on About.com

Here are photos of my creations using the flexible metal wire.

For a look at some of the resources I have been gathering please visit my Pinterest Jewelry Making board via the link below:

Follow Amanda Bevers's board jewelry making on Pinterest.

Guest Speaker Ben Nakamura on Classroom Management

Guest Speaker: Ben Nakamura on Classroom Management

Ben Nakamura Principal of North Network Juvenile Court and Community Schools visited our single subject credential program class to teach us about classroom management. I was extremely impressed by his presentation and the classroom management techniques he introduced to us.

He started his presentation by telling a story about a boy raised by a mom with mental problems addicted to heroin and an ex-gangster father. His mother died of overdose and was found alone dead in a ditch one day. He was sent to live with his father the ex-gangster who regularly beat and abused him. At the end of the story Mr.Nakamura revealed that this was his story. We were all hooked and dialed in to his every word after that.

One of his presentation slides featured a very interesting and thought provoking quote:

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
― Haim G. Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers

The part of this quote that speaks to me the most was the phrase “it is my response,” because that is the ultimate truth. It is up to me, the teacher, to create the safe, inviting, and fun learning environment I want. It is up to me to build lasting relationships of trust and understanding with my students. It is up to me to determine how best to help my students participate and learn. Mr. Nakamura speaks on this topic as well explaining that classroom management is up to us. It doesn't matter what kind of class we have or who the students are ultimately it is up to us to create the classroom atmosphere we are looking for.
Mr. Nakamura taught us the ABC’s of student’s needs based seemingly on Bloom’s taxonomy of needs:

Autonomy,

Belonging,

Competence.

He also taught us the 2 X 10 method which is taking two minutes out of every day for ten consecutive days to talk with a problem student in an informal and conversational manner appealing to their interests. Mr.Nakamura explains that this strategy will help build a relationship between you and the student that will hopefully prevent any major behavioral problems from arising in class in the future. I like this strategy because it allows me to get to know more about my students while at the same time preventing issues from occurring. My personal classroom management plans revolve around the idea of prevention over discipline.

Mr. Nakamura also gave us some great advice about interviewing for teaching positions. He said that his interviewing process involves giving teachers varied scenarios and asking them how they would handle the situations presented in the scenarios. Then if the teachers make it past that round of interviewing he gives them thirty minutes to prepare a lesson in the subject they are interviewing for. 

To help prepare us for this type of interview process while at the same time teaching us more about classroom management Mr. Nakamura passed out sample scenarios and asked us what we would do if this should happen to us. My groups scenario was about a boy named Cameron who refused to do the five minute warm-up exercise each day. Instead he would play around with other things in the class. When approached by the teacher he would respond rudely with, “Why won’t you just leave me alone you jerk!” When called upon to share my response I said that I would try the 2X10 strategy in order to try and build a stronger more positive relationship with the student and that I would also take a close look at my warm up exercise and see if I can design a more engaging and interesting exercise that might catch more of Cameron’s interest. I felt pretty good about my response and Mr. Nakamura said that I had a great response and that he had nothing to add. His response pleased me and told me that I was on the right track to having strong positive classroom management strategies.

20% Project Jewelry Making: Beading

Beading

Below are some photos of some beaded jewelry I made. I tried experimenting with different shapes and sizes, colors, and types of beads. Most of these beads are just some cheap simple plastic ones but I think they look pretty good. 

I used larger beads because they are easiest to work with. I played around with different sizes of the elastic cording going off of a few websites I researched. 

Cording Sizes and Info Website

I went ahead and bought the .5mm and .7mm clear elastic cording that they said was the two most common sizes.

My first jewelry set.

20% Project Jewelry Making: Step One Tools

Jewelry Making Tools: The Basics

1.  Wire Cutters
2. Round Nose Pliers
3. Chain Nose Pliers
4. Flat Nose Pliers
5. Crimp Tool

Recommended Extras:
Bead Stoppers

Here is a photo of the tools I bought and will be working with. In addition to the suggested tools I got a seed bead scooper, a bead reamer and this very thin and pointed tweezer like tool I don't know the name of. Most of these tools came in a nice little set I got at Michaels on sale. I plan on trying them out this weekend. :)

Please check out my Pinterest Board on Jewelry Making to see some of the sources I looked into to learn more about what tools to use and how.

Also here is a short video I found quickly going over some of the more common tools and their uses.






Visit Amanda's profile on Pinterest. Silver Jewelry's pin on Pinterest.

20% Project. Learning To Make and Sell Jewelry

20% Project. Learning To Make and Sell Jewelry

As a part of my credential program we are required to show our mastery of technology and our abilities to use it to learn and share by participating in an assignment called the 20% project. This project is based on practices that successful progressive companies like GOOGLE implement. These companies give their employees time to work on a project or idea that is all their own. This often leads to the invention of new innovative products and procedures. For my project I have decided to engage in a creative activity I have always wished I had more time to engage in and learn about, jewelry making. 

My goals:

1. Learn what tools and materials I will need to make jewelry.

2. Find interesting designs to try and recreate myself.

3. Make several different types and styles of jewelry.

4. Find out where and how I can sell my jewelry.

5. Put my jewelry up for sale. 

Stretch Goals:

1. Come up with my own style or design.

2. Create a how to video explaining how to create the new design I came up with.

CSUSM Arts and Lecture Series: Project Aware Reflection

Amanda Bevers

Cohort B

CSUSM Arts and Lecture Series: Project Aware Reflection

Project Aware was presented to us by RBV Assistant Principal Shannon Garcia and CEO/ founder of Project Aware Reginold Washington. They were supported by Narciso Igleseas who I believe is a teacher at a school for students expelled from other schools, and Jose Villareal whom I believe is a teacher at a different school but is involved in the program. They also had two teen guest speakers one a young African American girl whose name I didn’t quite catch and an older Latino teen boy names Ramero.

They explained how Project Aware was designed by Regi while he was in prison. He noticed that there were no programs to help teach young men how to stay out of prison so he designed one. This program evolved and branched out and is not helping at risk teens find the supports they need to be successful. The program is all about approaching behavior from an education standpoint and not a punitive one. It is about figuring out why students act out instead of just punishing for it. The program has successfully been implemented at RBV high and has resulted in a dramatically lower suspension and expulsion rate on campus. They are now branching the program out to other schools in the district.

Narciso shared some personal stories and explained how it is important to make content relevant to student’s lives. Shannon gave a presentation on how we need to focus on more than just the physiological needs of students. That we need to address the high levels of need on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. She also explained the “school to prison pipeline” scenario which details the statistics of the correlation between students who fail to complete high school and people who end up in prison. She suggests that intervention is key, not expulsion or suspension.

I felt that all of the information given in this presentation was extremely valuable and important to education. I agreed with all of the points they discussed and also believe in intervention over only discipline. Out of all of the amazing speakers however I was most moved by young Ramero’s speech. He shared his personal story of struggle and triumph over his behavior and his past. I never would have guessed that such a handsome, intelligent, and charismatic youth would have been subjected to such a hard life. One of the things that really impacted me was how he was able to forgive a peer for raping his sister and attempting to murder him. If a teenager can forgive all of that, than what can’t we forgive? He taught me that night that grudges and hate are not worth the trouble. He taught me to forgive.

I am extremely impressed with this program and hope that it spreads to more districts and quickly. When I get hired at a school this is one of the first things I look into trying to get my school to do.

Links:

CSUSM Arts and Lectures Series

Project Aware

Journal 10 NETS-T ( I )Point/Counterpoint: Does the U.S. Education System Support Innovation?

Ward,Welter, S. P. (2013, 03 04). Point/counterpoint: Does the u.s. education system support innovation?. Learning & leading with technology, Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/l-l-march-april-2013/point-counterpoint-does-the-u.s.-education-system-support-innovation-

The article “Point/Counterpoint: Does the U.S. Education System Support Innovation?” by Selena Ward and Pete Welter offer two different view points on the question of whether or not our education system is supportive of innovative thinkers.

Selena Ward offers the positive viewpoint saying that yes the U.S Education system does promote innovation by supplying schools with the money they need to purchase technological devices that will advance a student’s use with innovative technological machines. She believes it is not the system’s job to promote student innovation, she believes that job belongs to teacher’s and administrators.

Although I agree that it is a part of the teacher and administrator’s job to promote student innovation I think that she is wrong in her opinion that the education system is adequately supporting and promoting innovation by handing out money for tech. I think that that is the least they can do.

I agree more with the opinion of Pete Welter who believes that the education system is not developing, supporting, or promoting innovation. He argues that the education system today focuses to strongly on standardized testing. This focus creates kids that follow the rules without question, learn only what they are told to, and are made to believe that the only way to adequately judge intelligence is by passing a test.

Welter argues that this type of highly structured education is detrimental to creating innovative thinkers. He says that innovative thinkers are people who question the rules and establishments around them, they look for new ways of solving problems, they often specialize in a particular field and may not be as successful in others, and they are not afraid of failure because failure leads to better success.

Who do you agree with in this debate?

I strongly agree with Peter Welter’s argument because it makes sense. Our education system is stuck on conformity and innovation cannot properly thrive in such a constricting environment.

What do you think the U.S Education System should do to better promote and develop innovative thinking in schools?

I think the first major step needs to be completely eliminating the “No Child Left Behind” agenda and doing away with the strong focus on standardized testing. After that I think we need to make sure that the arts stay in schools. Arts classes are great at developing innovative thinking in students.