Coursework

I'm tired.
I was about to head to bed, but then I remembered I hadn't blogged yet today. Here's part of the reason I'm tired.
I'm trying to complete 12 hours of course work this summer so I can move up to the "masters plus 12" lane on the pay scale. I should have probably done this a little more gradually, rather than doing all 12 hours in one summer, but I didn't. I signed up for 4 distance-learning classes and am having to force myself to get it all done by August.
Here are the 4 books/classes I'm reading/taking:
This writing one is a model of teaching writing that I'm hoping we may adopt at my school. I've read this book and almost completed this work for this first course. I liked it a lot.
I've read about half of this book but haven't done any of the work yet. I'm pretty into the book and you've probably heard me talk about the differences between male/female retinas or hearing abilities. I'm fascinated by this stuff. I chose this course because I think it's important for teaching, but also because I was intrigued by what I may learn about my own two kids. I would recommend this book to any teacher or parent!
I haven't done anything with these last two texts yet. I guess I did flip through the first couple pages of this "difficult parents" book and it looked like the not-very-strong writing style was going to bug me. I kind of thought this might be an easyish class. Hopefully the book won't suck.
I'm very interested in learning more from this book. I don't know a whole lot about Autism or the spectrum disorders. The book (mine has a different cover) looks to be laid out in an easily understandable way, with different disorders having their own chapters. I haven't had many identified Autistic kids as students, but it does seem like there are more and more in our school communities every year.
In order to get work done I'm not reading any books for fun until I'm finished (boo). And I'm trying to just get something read or typed any chance I get. The very nice thing is that I don't have to go anywhere, I'm basically reading the texts and working from study guides. There are application type questions and for the first course I did teach several sample lessons to my students. I don't work very well on this type of stuff late at night, so I've found that if I can get up in the morning before the kids are up, and head to Starbucks (where I don't have internet access without paying) I can get some things done. This morning I was there before 7AM and got some good work in before coming home around 8:00. Up before 7 on a Saturday, when summer break has officially started, is not exactly what I call fun or restful. Thus, tired now.
Off to bed for me.