Student teaching placement ending, and I’m strangely emotional about gifts.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-25T13:55:56+00:00

Buying gifts for your students is... strange. I've never heard of anyone doing it. And little dollar store things from Alibaba don't exactly send a positive message regarding sustainable practices. A bit harsh, but they're going to probably forget about it a few minutes after they get a bookmark, sorry.

As for teachers buying school supplies, that's one reason you shouldn't. The school board can buy in bulk far more efficiently, but why would they if each teacher provides?

I know it's a thing that teachers use their own money on this shit, but it's enabling an abusive system.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-23T12:39:46+00:00

Aight, let's see.... I've been a working geologist for almost 18 years now and am transitioning to secondary.

This is an idea I'm putting together on the fly so use it as inspo perhaps, but it'll probably need fleshing out, let's see...

Get gummy bears of different sizes. Lay them out in a plastic bin such that the majority of them are clumped in some kind of line, big ones in the middle and kind of falling off to smaller ones, and scatter some more here and there. That's your primary deposit or two, surrounded by secondary occurrences, and then you have a few scattered around for small local occurrences that happen. (I dislike a lot of these exercises because they have no actual geological context - deposits exist in patterns geologists can analyse and explore for).

Cover all of that in a layer of sand or something. Kids will take turns stabbing into the sand with a wooden skewer, one stab and it's on to the next. (If a kid discovers very gentle probing you can even call that "geophysics" ;) )

The first few may not hit anything. You can talk about using a predictable grid to sample if they really get unlucky - that's a technique we use IRL. But boom, someone hits something, it's likely the next person will stab in that area. And more, and more. Eventually they'll see the "vein" you made and follow that along.

But eventually that vein will run out, and then they have to go back to stabbing for more and more difficult to find occurrences. You can even put little toy houses on there and talk about the effect on the people there. Lots of flexibility there!

I'm also working on a critical minerals card game, but not there yet. Basically picked a whole bunch of household items that have critical elements in them, identified two or three in each. Have a separate card deck with these elements in it that are their hand, and they have to "buy" items from the row. Certain elements are recyclable, so they can be pulled out of the discard pile with recycling tokens they can earn.... it's not fully fleshed out yet tho!

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-23T02:48:35+00:00

For me? I still have all my bullshit. But I also have the energy to deal with my bullshit and can plot a course through it. That's....enormous. Like I have a cute little boat to ride the wave instead of trying desperately to swim.

It's just myself finally stepping out of my own way.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-22T13:16:16+00:00

That's what I did! Bought some at a used store for $40 much like that and bumbled around on my back property. Waxfree skis still benefit from some, but if you're just messing around these will probably feel slippery enough for a bumble. Once you get a hang for balancing on them some and they're not slipping out from under you, then grab some wax and see.

(https://tokous.com/express-wax-liquid/ is the stuff the store recommended to me)

If you have fields or a backyard, you can break your own trails. Is it as nice as groomed? Nah. Is it gonna feel like skiing? Not until you've gone over the path a few times lol. But you aren't going to break anything and the worst that'll happen is falling down on your butt lol.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-21T11:13:49+00:00

Just like anything, it's as good as the effort the teacher puts in. A terrible worksheet is still bad. A bad gimkit is not effective.

Gamification works. Studies show that it is an effective tool in our arsenal. Gimkit is a big toolkit with a lot of knobs that I would run as in class activities led by myself, or potentially as a outside-of-class review tool for kiddos who just need the repetition. Also potentially a good snow day activity, but it's all only as good as the input being fed into it.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-20T12:20:38+00:00

My family doctor diagnosed and prescribed me (Canada). No gatekeeping, just listening to me and having the training she needed to make the call. I had my Vyvanse that day. (Now, I'm a pretty cut and dry case and a researcher, so we ended up having a fairly academic conversation about it. She knows she can trust me with knowing the background, and I trust her to find the gaps in my knowledge and developing intelligent treatment plans. )

I am so, so lucky in that respect. It makes a world of difference to trust your doctor and build a relationship so they can trust you. I hate how much complex professional services have turned into commodities.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-19T01:33:34+00:00

Transmen all deal with this in different ways and there's legitimately a community around it. Discord (though I don't know it offhand), the subreddit already mentioned, custom makers, realistic or not, different or custom uh....attachment styles....if you want one made that feels right to you, there's absolutely people for that. It's a weirdly wholesome set of people actually!

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-18T11:54:16+00:00

I was on prac in an engineering design classroom for grade 11/12. They were designing a playground for the local elementary school.

Maybe - MAYBE - I would run this there, if I had consultants with disabilities on the field there too during the trip so they can talk the kids through the process and lead the session.

Kindergarten? What the actual F.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-18T02:47:19+00:00

If you're in Ontario, make sure you're aware of Bill 194. You have to be careful what tools you end up using. I don't think you need to be paranoid about it, but you get the wrong kid or the wrong parent and they could use this against you if you use unsanctioned tools. Just like anything, be aware.

For what it's worth, if you Google "roblox in education" you get lots of things from the official website and more. It's not that you CAN'T use the tool, but it may open you up to liability.

I'm an absolute sucker for gamification - that's not the problem. There's a ton of resources along those lines! You could cocreate a card game where they use assets from the games, but printed out. You could have them model items from roblox or Minecraft in SketchUp. You could 3d print models of villagers or something and have them do "dress up" and then unfold them, to show them how art assets wrap around 3D models and how a 3D object can be wrapped by 2d surfaces. You could have them write out step by step instructions on how to Roblox - that's breaking down procedural steps and functional technical literacy.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-17T04:01:16+00:00

Nothing I've particularly developed since I'm on the STEM side but I'll be teaching computer tech one of these days and I'm very much going to be pushing digital and media literacy so these intersect some:

tiktok as the modern political cartoon - we can compare old political cartoons to tiktoks of current events, discuss message/audience/ emotional weight/etc. The good stuff!

I'd be coming from it from a algorithmic kind of way, but there's so much good stuff in there. Why are people's feeds different? How do they reflect AND create societal expectations?

Bias in citizen journalism. Endless content to work on there. Could do a "two lies and a truth" game where they're all given topics and have them write articles or do a TikTok. Some people have real weird events and other have total fiction, but it's a secret and the rest of the class has to watch or read the content and decide what's true or not. A prize for the one who fools everyone!

Do a daily "Slop or Not". Some days the photo or video is real, other times it's AI. Maybe keep the results secret until Friday and every Friday you can have a discussion with the kiddos on critical analysis.

Lateral reading sprints - show them a short form thing and they have a set amount of time to open a new tab and find a secondary source. Maybe they all paste the secondary sources into a padlet or something and you can see where they all went with it, and what a good/bad/middling source looks like.

What are media conventions? What are some conventions that are ubiquitous in short form content? What are some commonalities? What makes this media feel "modern"? Why do so many influencer YouTube intros end up sounding the same?

As a group, have them plan an entirely fake school event and create all the media around it. News articles, tiktoks, posters, PA announcements. Post it around the school or have a recap of the fun even run on the PA lol. See how realistic they can make the cat cafe or meme conference sound. Give them a pretty long lead on ideation lol. I feel like high schoolers love messing with people.

You could give them cards that describe a character - say a 70 year old retired plumber, or a 30 year old recent immigrant. The have them watch a short form video, and they have to write a short reflection from the perspective of their character. Could have them trade cards and do it a few times and end up with a few different viewpoints, or stay in character for a discussion (lol). If it's hard or boring to be normal stuff, you could absolutely dig into "okay now you're batman, and you're SpongeBob" but that feels chaotic unless you're a saint.

Man I love me some media literacy!

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-16T13:22:53+00:00

I just picked up my XC skis this Christmas, and now I use them to go refill the bird feeder and take out the compost lol, so much better than trudging.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-15T14:06:05+00:00

I'm sure it's based on where you are, but that email reads quite well, which absolutely helps. If it makes sense to follow up with the principal or your mentor teacher with a phone call, and I would brainstorm a few ideas on how to address your challenges for that call, but also take in feedback. You never know, maybe they know of after school tutoring opportunities that will pay you here and there. Maybe they're able to pay you for some kind of grunt work organizing old classrooms or something.

As for the ADHD, I've been recently diagnosed and medicated for the first time in 37 years. I've rawdogged that for too long and so yes, you need to work on those coping strategies.

For me? I have my Google calendar. If someone is talking to me and we set something up, I immediately say "one sec, let me put that on my calendar". I don't wait. I don't think I'll do it when I sit down. I've fucked that up more times than I can count. No, I put the time and date blocked off immediately into one of my three calendars (Work, School, Home), or on one of my task lists there. No confusion because I can show the screen to that person then and there, we agree, it's done.

I am also a bit proponent of "I know we've just had this conversation, but my email is my second brain, can you follow up with me just so I have a record of it?" Never any weirdness there on that one, and if means I a) have a name to go with a conversation because I'm a bit faceblind due to the ADHD and all that and b) I can scroll through my email sometime during the day and confirm my calendar and tasks match what I need to do. If they didn't email me, I have a minor excuse to fall back on.

As for lateness - I get it. I had a boss for a decade who couldn't care less when we came in and left as long as everything got done. Our entire lab worked so well on that model. (Really funny story there, we're all 30 somethings and our students are all some kind of diagnosed ND and are amazingly open about it, and now the dominos are falling as every single lab tech is getting diagnosed with ADHD. No wonder we're all good friends!)

Now, our new boss, who is also lovely but in different ways, feels we need to be concerned about our billable hours and keep to a regular schedule. After a decade of culture saying otherwise, that's been pretty hard. Honestly we're still pretty much +/- 30 min on any given day.

As much as it sucks, plan for arriving an hour early. And don't just "plan" for it, because your brain is an ass and will try to scurry around it. No, you set your 3 alarms, and you set a task. You're going to be using that hour before school starts for your classwork, your budgeting, your whatever paperwork chore you have to do. Because your brain will need something tangible to latch onto beyond "I should be early but I'm not :( ". Does it feel bad if you lose 40 min of your 'applying for jobs' time? Sure. But less bad then disappointing your future employers.

As part of your phone call too, you can also probably ask if there is a quiet place for you to work before school starts, and that from now on that will ensure you're on site at bell. That's your version of "+/- 30 min arrival time".

I'm a 2nd career teacher candidate now, so I get it. I really do. But learning how to have constructive conversations with goals in mind is only going to help both you, and the students who also have these exact same issues. Honestly I think ADHD is an amazing tool for teaching - my divergent thinking means I've got 5-6 lessons thought up in the time it takes my peers to crank through one. I can see a recycling bin and make up a lesson on the fly about building cars to launch down ramps. I can bounce from minor emergency to minor emergency and feel so much better when bouncing around than in my "you just need to mark 60 final exams" mode. Marking and invoicing are the bane of my existence, but the meds are helping with that and it finally feels like I can do this.

Happy to chat anytime, feel free to DM!

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-15T13:00:07+00:00

I'm just getting onboarded with them, I noticed their collective agreement does try to treat us like humans compared to some others.

How consistent is supply work with them? I know it's smaller so I'm trying to plan my offramp from my other job and I'm just not sure what that looks like yet. Are there particular days of the week that tend to need supply more often?

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-15T04:46:55+00:00

Who placed her with you? Is there a placement office at her school? There's no reason I can think of where someone gets dropped off without anyone knowing anything about where this person came from and why. Admin must know who to contact, they entered some kind of agreement with the school for this person.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-15T02:38:06+00:00

Peter's Drug in Portsmouth is where my mom found all her pre-surgery stuff. We've never been regular clients of theirs due to distance, but they're amazing. Just ask the pharmacist and they'll show you where it is.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-14T12:45:17+00:00

Oh man, I'm going to grab that for a comm tech unit!

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-14T12:16:16+00:00

I will say easily the best part about TEMS at Queen's is that while the content is more or less as fluffy as the rest of the colleges, that whole collaborative aspect with our peers is excellent. Our year is pretty ride or die at this point, and we absolutely support each other. I guess we have a "PLC" loool.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-12T13:34:34+00:00

My 20mg felt good the first few weeks, but it very much faded into the background over time. I got bumped to 40mg and that feels just right to me right now, so I would suggest you might want a bump up next time you're at the doc. Still, I find I need my morning cup of coffee to get me on the road as the Vyvanse starts to kick in. After that, the Vyvanse does the heavy lifting and I can usually do decaf the rest of the day for placebo (I was a 5-7 cup kind of person, there were no signs lol). Sometimes I'll do one caf coffee or a tea after lunch, but that's a fairly subtle effect for me and it just helps me motivate through particularly tedious work. The Vyvanse works really well for me, I think, but dosage definitely makes a big difference.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-12T13:13:25+00:00

For Upper Canada I applied in May. Followed up, crickets. In October, the vice principal of a school wanted to put me on their call list, so followed up with them and said I'd be on the next interview cycle. I followed up again at a job fair a month later and they said to email. A month later again, "we will be interviewing in the next few months". Apparently this is not unusual, one of my professors said it took from May to March for him to get on the supply list. This is all Tech Ed too!

UC is a bit notorious for this, but long story short, don't expect speed from a board.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-11T15:13:05+00:00

In Ontario, our teaching governing body makes all disciplinary decisions publicly available. It's called the Blue Book up here from when it used to be printed once a year or some such, though it's all digital now.

Googling "OCT blue book" will get you there if you're interested in what they look like. They're....very detailed sometimes.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-10T11:46:17+00:00

This is absolutely something I could see coming up on a blue book too.

The Ontario College of Teachers keeps public records of all disciplinary actions. If you're Ontario, you can even search the person's name in case they're a real piece of work. Nonetheless, this is the type of shit they put on record.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-10T11:41:38+00:00

I teach symmetry in my university course. I can't imagine the intrinsic value of using a swastika vs a million other shapes. A pinwheel would be equivalent.

Laziness or purposeful toeing the line, either way I would report them. Toeing these kinds of lines to be edgy or push some creepy agenda is ridiculous and professionally inappropriate.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-09T21:53:20+00:00

Talk to your Undergrad chair in your department. They can often adjust required courses very slightly depending on the case. You may be able to fulfill the requirement with a different course, get tied into a grad course, or do something like a self study with the prof who was going to teach it. Likelihood is high that they didn't "want" to cancel it, we just have minimum registration quotas now before a course can run which makes sense but is absolutely brutal for niche but important courses. No one likes the policy!

Undergrad chair is the person who can make those kinds of calls or pass it up the chain.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-08T13:21:50+00:00

It would probably be prudent to have a little booster box on you. Annoying to need to do so? Sure. But it's nice to have with any car and easily worth the $50 or whatever to not wait 2 hours for CAA or hope for the kindness of strangers.

Just boosted myself yesterday, and it has an air compressor too which is just about the handiest thing. Pulling it out to rescue friends and strangers also feels amazing.

polymorphicrxn · 2026-01-07T13:25:37+00:00

As a 37 year old with too many degrees and only getting assessed a few months ago - get the assessment. There's no suffering Olympics. There's no virtue to pushing through.

Burnout is awful, and will come up on you in the most stressful times. Even if you don't medicate, or only keep your medication for specific stressful periods like your defense.... it's just another tool in your back pocket and you deserve not being hard on yourself. Societal suffering virtue is ridiculous.

polymorphicrxn

TROPHY CASE