It's Teacher Appreciation Week, and here's another place where you can shout out your favorite teacher. (If you want to go for extra credit - at least from us - tell us what your favorite teacher does that makes him or her stand out!)
| SGT Jason Mike visited Mr. Hildabrand's students on April 12, 2013 to share his experience fighting in the Iraq War. SGT Jason Mike is a Combat Medic that has served in the United States Army for over nine years. SGT Mike has been around the Army his whole life growing up as an Army brat. After graduating high school in Kentucky, he accepted an offer to play collegiate football at Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida. While attending college, the tragedies of September 11th rocked the entire nation. The weekend following that tragic day, Jacksonville University was one of the only few schools to play a football game. During the pregame ceremony, the game was dedicated to the memories of all who were lost on that day. This compelled SGT Mike and he felt a need and a push to take his life into a different direction. After the season, SGT Mike walked into a US Army recruiting office and joined the Army. Following initial training, Mike found himself prepping for a deployment to Iraq.
While deployed, he served as a medic for the 617th Military Police Company. The units’ main responsibility was to provide Main Supply Route Security. On March 20th, Mike was part of a 10 man patrol that was ambushed by 50 insurgents. Mike’s vehicle was completely surrounded and after dismounting the vehicle with his team, two of his fellow comrades were shot. Mike began to provide aid and return fire. Soon the gunner was hit and Mike found himself completely in the fight by himself. Mike began to lay down fire in the direction of all of the insurgents which were completely surrounding him. After taking out many threats, Mike’s gunner who was on the .50 cal machine gun gained enough strength to begin to take out more targets. | As Mike returned to provide treatment he noticed he was being fired at by a sniper and took the sniper out with an AT-4 Anti-Tank rocket. Mike soon evacuated all wounded casualties. After the 45 minute firefight, 26 insurgents were killed, 6 injured, and 1 captured unharmed. This battle resulted in the largest insurgent death toll since the battle of Fallujah. All three of Mike’s team members survived their wounds and made 100% recovery. For his actions, SGT Jason Mike was awarded the nation’s third highest medal for valor, the Silver Star.
Today, SGT Jason Mike is serving with the 20th Special Forces Group as a Medic and in pursuit of the Green Beret. Along with SGT Mike’s obligation to his country, he serves the Commonwealth of Kentucky as a police officer in the City of Paris. SGT Mike has been a Police Officer with Paris since January of 2012 where he patrols the streets protecting and serving the citizens of Paris.
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 A Walk to Remember (movie based on the Nicholas Sparks' novel)
 Hi, Students, Teachers, and Chaperones!
We would love to hear about your trip to Philadelphia this Spring Break. Please post comments about your trip and text Mr. McKinley any photos and videos you have taken during your adventure to this historical city and he will forward them to your school librarian for publication. Share with us your favorite sites, restaurants, and activities. What was your favorite part about the trip? Where were some of the places you visited? Was there anything fascinating you learned about Philadelphia that you never knew before?
Note: Comments are moderated, so if you don't see your comment post immediately, no worries! The comment is just waiting to be approved by the Pawprints website moderator.
| Have you ever lost anything? Anything really Important? Well, Mr. Alexander had lost something very important to him. He lost his Saint X class ring which was stolen from him. His ring was lost for 7 years.
Then, one day a woman in Akron, Ohio found it. The woman looked in her hometown for the ring’s owner for two years. But come to find out, she was looking in the wrong place! One day, she decided to take Mr. Alexander’s ring to her high school in Akron. One of the coaches there recognized the ring. He knew that the ring was a Saint X ring.
Eventually, after a little more research and getting in touch with Saint X, the lady found Mr. Alexander’s address. When she found his address, she returned the ring to him and wrote him a nice letter explaining everything. She told him that she found the ring lying in the grass when she was taking her dog for a walk and how it had taken her two years to return the ring to its rightful owner.
What a cool story and a nice lady!
Reporter Autum Guffey, Grade 8
|  Mr. Alexander's ring
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Eighth grade student Tiffany Ellis shares her career goals.
I am still not fully decided, but I have narrowed it down. I either want to be a Psychiatrist or a Forensics Specialist. These are both really interesting jobs to me, but I still have a few questions about both.
Psychiatry seems like a wonderful job to me! Personally, I love to help people. I think it would be a great thing to be able to help people and give them advice. One thing I am worried about with getting into psychiatry is all the stress. I really don’t mind helping people with they’re problems, but I never know what I’m getting in to and what patients I might get. There is nothing wrong with anyone; it’s just the fact that I’d never know what problems they may have to talk to me about, and I may not be strong enough to handle it all.
Forensics seems like one of the most awesome things I could get into! It seems like a great, interesting job, and that’s what I’m looking for! On the shows like CSI and NCIS; Forensics is always a big part. I have always wanted to get into a science job field and if it was to happen, this would be the one for me. One thing I always think and worry about with this job is if I don’t run a test right or if I mess one little thing up, I could be the cause of someone not going to jail or prison if they need to be or I could be putting someone innocent behind bars. That’s a lot of responsibility!
I have several ways that I will accomplish my goal of being either a Psychiatrist or a Forensics Specialist:
1. I will always do my best in school and not let anything get in the way of me and my work.
2. No matter what, I will always finish what I started.
3. I will meet all expectations asked by anyone, and I will complete them just the way they were asked to be done.
4. I will listen to my parents, teachers, and administrators when they give me advice.
5. I will keep a positive attitude and always believe that “I can”.
I deeply believe in myself that I can do anything I set my mind to and I will continue to believe that. I will never listen to the people who tell me that I’m not good enough or the people who tell me I can't. If you have the same positive attitude and determination that I have, you will accomplish your goal and turn out to be whatever you dream of being in the future.
- Tiffany Ellis, Grade 8
An essay about love written by my Aunt Elizabeth who had raised me and my sister for two years of our childhood.  Me (Ms. Rodriguez, age 5), Aunt Elizabeth, Sandy (sister, age 4) When I was young, I thought love was a feeling of exhilaration and adoration for another human being. My idea of love was that it lasts forever and that one could forgive all sins as long as there is love. What hogwash!
In reality, love starts out as like you become friends with another human being and then love occurs. While those feelings of exhilaration and adoration do have some part in the beginning stages, when the reality of life sets in, that is when one finds out what love is about.
I can't claim to be an expert on love, but I've had my share of lessons on the meaning of love. By the time I was thirty, I was on my third marriage. I used to joke with friends and say, "I tried to keep up with Elizabeth Taylor," but my emotions couldn't take the wear and tear. My best friend used to say, "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride." I said, "I have one better: 'Always a bride, never a bridesmaid.'" My mother thought I was going to be an old maid. I think that is very funny.
Although I've been around the block a few times, I believe I know what love is about. It is a commitment of sharing one's life with another human being through good times and bad times. If the adrenaline was flowing and the sparkles were in the eyes at all times, it would lead to a short life. Who could survive this? I couldn't! Love usually isn't like the Cinderella story where the prince sweeps you up in his arms and off you go into the sunset.
Love is a feeling that grows deeper and deeper as the years go by, in spite of one's faults. If you have love, you can overcome any problems that life gives. Love is a strength that grows stronger and stronger with time. Love is a chain that is unbreakable. Love is a necessary part of living a healthy and fulfilling life. At last, at last, I have found love.
-Elizabeth Beckworth, April 13, 1990
A Chalk Talk is a forum (usually on the board) where students write a response to a prompt or respond to other students. In the slideshow above, Mr. Fulk participates in a Chalk Talk with Mrs. Ward's geography classes, answering and discussing the question, "What does it take to be an American?"
I recently attended a training sponsored by Discovery Education at KSU where guest presenter and Director of the Discovery Education Network, Hall Davidson, demonstrated how various technologies are transforming the classroom, making teaching and learning a more interactive experience for educators and students. Keeping students engaged during the learning process is a challenge we teachers face every day in the classroom, and Davidson addressed this problem with some technological solutions, particularly in regards to augmented reality apps. Augmented reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality). In other words, a computer program manipulates an image, video, or sound clip to enhance the veiwer's perceived reality. Unlike virtual reality, in which a person's environment transforms into an entirely different computer-simulated environment, augmented reality combines the real-world environment with the augmented one. As seen in the video (right), children are reading books through a computer lense that allows them to see the pictures on the page come to life in three dimensional images and videos right in the palm of their hands. Davidson said that the key to effectively engage our students during the learning process is to make the material studied relevant to them, to make them feel that they are part of the learning process, and what better way than through the use of augmented reality programs. With augmented reality apps like Aurasma, Davidson showed us how images and objects we see every day come to life. Through Aurasma, Davidson focused his iPad camera on a twenty dollar bill which suddenly transformed into layers of images and videos that "augmented" our own reality, or perception, of the object. Aurasma not only allows us to follow various images, but we have the capability of creating our own augmented reality images which can be shared with others instantly with just a tap of a button. | As an educator, imagine students using Aurasma to teach a concept or tell a story to their peers. Sure, to have students augment an image will take time, but Davidson asked us teachers to consider the amount of time and expense producing a simple movie with special effects would have taken just a few years ago. Modern technologies like Aurasma (which is a free app) naturally save time and money, permitting users to dedicate more of their efforts spent on creating innovative products that give viewers the type of interactive experience one would not get from simply watching a video.
Other augmented reality apps, such as Look-up (space invaders game), McLaren P1 (as seen in the video below), and Augment, are fun programs that have some obvious implications for the future of gaming, entertainment, and marketing, but how augmented reality will be utilized in the classroom to enrich the learning process generates some exciting new prospects among teachers and students alike--prospects that are no longer confined to the pages of science fiction, but are here now, real, unreal, or augmented.
--Ms. Rodriguez, Library Media Specialist |
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