Ryker Jace Daniels

So here he is, little Ryke! 20 1/2 inches tall and weighing in at a whopping 8 lbs 10 oz! His hair spiked in a mohawk, he is ready to take on the world (though he may be lacking a bit of testosterone). And his mom weighing in at 105 lbs and standing at 5 foot 2 inches, concedes defeat on October 26th at 9.01 pm after only 3 hours of labor! Go Ryke! In the struggle he seems to have lost one of his jewels, the other requires closer observation by a traind professional at primary children's this Thursday.

For those those of you who cant decipher my nonsense, Ryker lost one of his testicles due to a lack of blood supply and the other has only a limited supply and will need some extra care. Otherwise he and his mom are both doing great and will hopefully be headed home tonight.

More Teaching

9/10
Last week I gave a demo in class on Positive and negative space. It was a lesson that Mr. Christiansen had prepared and taught in a previous class. Today I was nervous, as it was the first Class I would give a lesson and demo that I had prepared. Being nervous I rushed through the lesson and ended up with several confused kids and repeating on an individual basis the methods to completing the assignment. The assignment was to recreate a line drawing on a larger scale. Each student’s drawing was one quarter of an entire image. I stressed the importance of maintaining proportions so that their image would match up with the drawings of their classmates. I taught the students sighting techniques and hints on how to check their work.
9/11
Friday I repeated the lesson from Thursday with greater success as I had already run through the assignment and demo and made changes based on the feedback from Mr. Christiansen. I also gave instruction and a demo for Mr. Christiansen in his last class, as he was feeling a bit under the weather. It went well and he gave me useful feedback to improve my performance.
9/14
Today was A day. First period was Drawing 1-2. I took role and after Mr. Christiansen’s instruction the students continues working on their shoe drawings in the hall. I spent the period walking up and down the hall. This allowed me to help the students remember to stay on task; I was also able to assess the student’s performance. Moving among the students allowed me to give aid and answer questions. I carried with me a sheet of plexiglass and marker that allowed me demonstrate the Contour and helped the students to more clearly see how to translate a three dimensional object onto a flat surface.
2nd period is Painting. The students were instructed by Mr. Christiansen and then began their assignment. The assignment was to simply fill up two 5-inch squares with colors. One square was to be filled with colors the student likes and the other with colors the student dislikes. Students worked with Acrylic paints. 3rd period is prep period and I spent that time working on my lesson plans. 4th was Drawing 3-4 and I did role, gave follow up instructions and put the students to work on their line drawings. I realized today that the project didn’t go as well as I had hoped. The drawing became very technical and difficult for the students to enlarge and maintain proportionate. They worked diligently and improved on gauging distances, but I was not as happy with my assignment as I would like.

9/15

Today went well. I helped students with sighting while drawing their shoes, and spent the class period learning the students names as I talked to them. I took role as usual. In Drawing 3-4 I also covered the methods the students were using to complete their drawing. The students listened well and performed well.

Student Teaching begins

Today concluded the second day of student teaching for me and I tought that everyone might want an update. At this point though I think that it should be student observation. I report to the Granger High School at 7.15 every morning. My cooperating teacher is Paul Christiansen, a teacher of 12 years, who has beed at Granger for 3. I sit in his class and introduct myself. The first Day of class I was so vervvous that my stomach made me go to the bathroom just before the first period began. I was red as a beat I am sure as I introduced mfelf to the classs. It was the first timei in all of my schooling that I was in a classroom were I, as a Caucasian was the minority. The class sizes are 35 plus. The horror stories I had hear about this school have thus far been proven wrong. The Students are attentive and respectful. One thing I have noticed is that the students are skills appear to be significantly lacking. The Drawing 1 class that is taught here feels more like and Art elements class. The students show little ability in being able to perceive and put onto paper what they see before them.

Mr. Christiansen has 7 classes. 3 on the A schedule and 4 on the B schedule. They all fall into Drawing 1 or 2 and painting. At this point all I do is walk around the class, try to memorize the students names, give suggestions, and answer any questions. I am excited for next week when I will begin taking role and contributing to the lessons. I hope that by week 3 I will take over the classes and act as a full time teacher. I did feel pretty good today when two students on separate occasions, approached me to ask my opion and advice instead of going straight to their teacher. I hope that they can all feel comfortable asking for my assistance and trust my advice.

I will keep everyone updated on my progress

I have also been working on the side doing this movie poster for a short film produced by Harry Cross, Jr. (Former roomate to Kelsy and Kent)

Best weekend

This last weekend with Ivy was fabulous, though it did start out a little painful. Friday my eye had started became irritated. (Probably because I had been wearing my contacts for several days an not removed them) Saturday when I awoke with the intent of driving to get Ivy I was having a difficult time keeping my eye open and when open I struggled to see through all of the tears. I made it to Pocatello and concluded that my eye was not improving and if I was going to be going to the doctor I wanted to do so prior to picking up Ivy. So Liz gave me directions to an urgent care facility were I was checked out. After concluding that I would need to see an optometrist and pending any conclusive diagnosis I returned to the road. I picked up Ivy and we returned to Logan without incident. (Thank goodness for sunglasses)

That afternoon Ivy and I went to first dam and fed ducks. After a short conversation with an older man I was offered the use of his canoe and I of course accepted. Ivy thoroughly enjoyed the canoe ride around the perimeter of the lake.

That night we Drove into the canyon with Emily and a few friends where we built a campfire and roasted mallows and hot dogs. I set up the tent in hopes that Ivy would want to stay the night. After everyone took off and it was just Ivy and myself relaxing in front of the fire I feared that she would get bored and request that we leave and go home as she previously had on several occasions that evening. However she soon discovered that the tent, or sheep camp as she called it, was a joy so run in and out of. As the fire was dying Ivy decided that even though the tent had a mesh top, (thank you Kent) we needed to lay out on the grass and look up at the stars. Of course I obliged and soon we were picking out very imaginative constellations. The conversation went something like this…

Daddy; Look Ivy, I see the big dipper. It is those four stars with the tail.

Ivy; Oh look daddy, I see an elephant!

Of course then I saw, among other things a dragon, she saw a mermaid, I saw an Ivy, and she saw a daddy.

As the air chilled I maneuvered my legs into the tent and put a blanket over them. (I was wearing shorts) Ivy cuddled up next to me on the grass and I was happy. After a little while Ivy apparently got cold as well because she meandered into the sheep camp and emerged with a blanket, which she used to cover both her and I as she lay down on my chest.

I don’t know it I can accurately do justice to this marvelous event in words. I was lying in the grass on my back. The fire was now smoldering out. The stars were brilliant. The river was no more than 50 feet in the distance, bathing us it sweet gurgling song, while the rest of the world stood calm and natures sounds and smells surrounded me. And as if that weren’t wonderful enough I could feel the rise and fall of my little girls calm breathing, as she lay calm, embracing and relaxing.

There, in that most perfect of situations we fell asleep. Had I never again awoken I would have felt complete.

Of course I did awake and realized that I should put Ivy in her sleeping bag. She slept like a log, better than most nights in my bed next to me. In the morning we awoke and packed up. She really was an angel for the entire camping trip. That afternoon we went on a 4-mile steep climb up to the wind caves with a few friends. Ivy had the luxury of riding in the backpack the entire way. I wished someone had installed and escalator. All in all I’d say it was a fabulous weekend and one I will always cherish.

So this post is going to look a little odd, I uploaded all the photos at once and they just kinda ordered themselves. So here is the deal. Ivy with the slinky is was taken cuz When I said she looked cute she said I should take a picture. The pancake is her helping me with breakfast. She is a great cook. The images at first dam are of Ivy throwning rocks into the water. She really enjoyed it. She liked to see the splash and she threw rocks for ever.

Spiral Jetty

This morning my sculpture went to The Spiral Jetty. It was a fun drive out there and a beautiful day. It was fun to go see it. I recommend that everyone go see it. hopefully in the next few years the salt lake will swell and I'll go see this piece of art sticking out of the water as it was intended. This land art was built in 1970 by Robert Smithson. The year after it was built the the lake water level raised and the work was underwater for the next 30 years.