Australia 2015 Day 1

July 3, 2015

While waiting for our flight we visited with a cowboy and a cowboy clown (they were visiting Australia for a bull riding event). Our seat mate for the long 14 hour flight was an exchange student who was on her way to new Zealand. We made it to Brisbane after 14 hours of movies and sleep. I spent time watching a bull riding movie, The Longest Ride and an Australian movie called Paper Planes (cute) and slept for a while. When we arrived, my Samsonite luggage had one wheel missing. It had been completely broken off. Virgin Australia gave me a new piece of luggage to make up for it. It wasn't as good as the Samsonite, but it had the same features. I thought it was nice of Virgin Australia to just give me new luggage on the spot.

After that we had to figure out how to get to Atlas Rent-A-Car. While waiting, 17 Straw-necked Ibis flew over. We misidentified them at first since our binoculars were still in our backpacks (they were black-and-white in-flight and we thought they might be magpie goose) but we figured it out as soon as we managed to rip our binoculars out of our backpacks.

Andrew, at Atlas rental car, helped us set up the car for tolls. That way when we went through Sydney and Brisbane bridges, tunnels, and faster highways, we wouldn't have any problems dealing with it. Then we started getting used to the car.

Bob was declared the official driver. Driving on the left is very interesting. The windshield wipers were used a lot in place of the turn signals until he got it down. The windshield wiper and turn signal controls are on the opposite sides of the steering wheel from those in the United States.

We found Boondall Wetlands and immediately saw Australian White Ibis, Royal Spoonbill, and Willie Wagtail. As we tried to figure out how to tour the area, we enlisted help from one of the people who work at the Visitor Center. She explained the various paths we could take and asked if we had seen the Tawny Frogmouth. We hadn't and of course we wanted to! So we got great looks at a Tawny Frogmouth on our first day in Australia!

We had fun figuring the birds out, watching their behavior, and trying to get a handle on being "new birders" all over again. Around 1 PM, we stopped for lunch at Nudgee beach and had close up looks at Butcher Bird, Australian Magpie, White Ibis, and Blue-faced Honeyeater. Bob had a burger and chips and I had fish and chips. (Ketchup does not come with chips there, it's called tomato sauce and costs a dollar to $1.50 depending on where you go.) Bob noticed that there was a beet in his burger. Apparently beets are a big deal on sandwiches over here. Since Bob likes beets it was no big deal, and he gave me a bite and it tasted good to me.

After lunch we birded a boardwalk and the beach before searching for a location called the Dowse Lagoon. Once we figured out how to park!!!, we enjoyed the Purple Swamphens, Dusky Moorhens, and tons of Ibis mixed in with Little Black Cormorants, Intermediate Egret, Pacific Black Duck, and Hardhead which is also known as a White-eyed Duck.

It was getting dark as we headed for Lytton to find our hotel, Waterloo Bay Hotel. After some confusion, we got a room with key controlled lighting. You have to put the plastic part of the key chain in a slot on the wall or the lights don't work. We unpacked from the car (a blue Nissan pulsar) with license TVT-total vulture tours. That would help me remember the license plate. We had pizza and salad and a hot chocolate at the Fig Restaurant at the Hotel. A lot of the hotels have things called Pokies, which are casino-like games that are very popular here.

As we were crashing from our adrenaline filled day, we did the bird list, 41 species for our first day in Australia.

2012 - 13 Goals

1)  Learn to use Twitter.  Presently I'm pretty clueless about how it works and haven't spent much time trying to figure it out.

2) Post on my blog at a minimum of once each month.  It doesn't matter if it is bird, craft, or education, just do it!

3) Use the three act math lessons from Dan Meyer.  I like them, I am just having trouble figuring out how to grab interest for everything I teach.

4) Create a GLAD Unit about the brain.  My students need to know how their brain works.

5) Create and maintain a CFG group at work.  Now that I'm official, I've got to get this off the ground.

6) Make time to be with friends and family.  Game night, book groups, family gatherings are all things I manage to be "too tired" for once the school year gets going.

7) Go birding once a month.  It's in writing now, let's see what happens.  I go so much in the summer and STOP when school starts.

8) Work out at least 20 minutes a day four times a week.  Hour long sessions at the gym don't count.  This isn't an averaging goal.  This is a "do it more than you are right now" goal!

9) No blogging, web-surfing, or online gaming after 10 PM.  Since I need more sleep than the average teacher, this has got to stop.  I get totally distracted by Facebook updates, Scrabble with someone in Pakistan, or the various blogs I would like to read more often and end up in bed later than I had planned.

10) Talk less in class.  Develop lessons where the students are talking and I'm walking around listening.  This means no repeating what students have just said.

Last minute thoughts...

Posters are up, projector is connected, paper is in place and I'm ready to hit the ground running with some simple algebra for my 6th graders on the first day.  I've always spent a few periods setting up guidelines and expectations, but I'm debating with myself about that this year.  I think it might be better to get to work and address facilitation issues as they arise.

I'm also debating on how I want the warm-ups to work.  I pulled out my AIMS books and copied a few What's Next pages and am thinking that this will be the Monday and Tuesday warm up. Or the Monday Warm Up/Homework.  If students talk to their parents, siblings, and friends about solving the problems, at least they are having a discussion about patterns that may rub off in the classroom.  It's all about learning.

I still need to talk to my colleagues about how they feel about intermittent math homework.  I want to avoid assigning homework on those days where I feel I didn't finish the lesson, or the students didn't understand the concept enough to work on it independently.  I can always assign mangahigh.

Roaming into the Classroom

Well, summer is over and it's time to get back into the classroom and start practicing my craft once again.  I've reread a few books and read some new ones and now I'll get to see how I apply the ideas to this new batch of students who were mostly born in the year of the Twin Tower destruction. 

Some of the revisited books include:
Connecting Mathematical Ideas: Middle School Video Cases to Support Teaching and Learning
Jo Boaler, Stanford University, Cathlee Humphreys, Fremont High School

Young Mathematicians at Work: Constructing Fractions, Decimals, and Percents
Catherine Twomey Fosnot, City College of New York, Maarten Dolk, Freudenthal Institute, The Netherlands

Thinking Mathematically: Integrating Arithmetic & Algebra in Elementary School
Thomas Carpenter, University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, Megan L Franke, University of California, Los Angeles, Linda Levi, Teachers Development Group

Going into the actual classroom today was a bit overwhelming!  I was ostensibly there to help find a book for a new teacher friend of mine.  I couldn't find the book, Marcy Cook's Math Starters and Stumpers.  I use some of the ideas to make posters and she wanted to do this in her classroom.  I put posters around the room and students can solve them when they are wondering what to do.  I have the students put answers on a sticky note and if no other student challenges an answer, the solver gets credited with the solution.  I ended up reordering the book, which I had originally tabbed quite nicely, and ordering the More Math Starters and Stumpers as well.   At $15.00 a pop, they are a great resource.  I hope they arrive soon.

So, if you are wondering what I got done today in the actual classroom, it wasn't much.  I searched a lot, rearranged books, put up one interactive poster for Krypto and contemplated what will go on all the walls.  I'm not sure I want to put my degrees, certificates, and awards up this year.  Should I?

Monday Mailers

Thanks to the participants on Monday Mailers, I had a mailbox full of treasure this week.

Neuroma, what fun

Well, more foot pain in my left foot finally urged me to see the podiatrist before school starts. I was diagnosed with Morton's Neuroma. You can read all about it if you are really bored. It looks like a snake bit me though! Today it's sore from the shot, but I was told I could hike, bike, and generally cause mayhem.

Pelagic Birding out of Half Moon Bay August 14, 2011

Pelagic Birding with Alvaro's Adventures out of Half Moon Bay August 14, 2011

We stayed in Redwood City on the 13th and left at 5:30 AM on the 14th to meet Alvaro et. al. at the Harbor Master Building in Pillar Point at 6:30.

We arrived early after I got a Reduced Fat Turkey Bacon Breakfast Sandwich at Starbucks. I took Bonine, because I’m a “better safe than sorry” pelagic birder. The ocean was calm with high overcast an good visibility in the harbor. We watched Elegant Terns, Western, Heerman’s, and California gulls, and Double-crested cormorants until we boarded the boat and signed a million waivers. Once everyone had signed, we were on our way.

We cruised several interior harbor jetties and saw several BLACK TURNSTONE and somebody saw Surfbird (or said it) but it wasn’t us as I intently searched the rocks to find one! We saw all three species of Cormorant and a few Red-necked Phalarope. Once we were away from the harbor mouth, we turned toward the beach and looked for, but couldn’t find Marbled Murrelet. As we cleared the wash rocks and headed for Maverick’s at Pillar Point, we saw very little and the boat came onto a northwesterly heading and was exposed to a 4 ft. swell with one foot wind waves. At this point, I was not feeling well, along with about half the people on the boat. Some had already “tossed their cookies” but I was just queasy. Jim Lomax was in the cabin looking green and remained there for virtually the whole trip. These wind waves increased to two feet as we made a two hour passage to a point 25 miles offshore and 9 miles due south of the Farallon Islands. The first hour and a half was really slow regarding birds. We were seeing lots of gulls, COMMON MURRES and a few PIGEON GUILLEMOT, NORTHERN FULMAR, RHINOCEROS AUKLET and a PARASITIC JAEGER while we were still inshore.

During this passage the overcast cleared and the wind picked up to 10 knots as we entered San Francisco County waters. However, at the northwest apex of our circuit as we passed over the continental shelf and the bottom fell away to over 2000 feet, we saw our first BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS of the day and our first of many humpback whales along with other birds. At this point, Alvaro and the captain decided to lay out a chum line consisting of Cod Liver oil, and fish carcasses, augmented with artificially buttered popcorn. We drove up and down this chum line. My stomach couldn’t take any more and I helped the chumming efforts. Gulls and albatross started to increase in numbers and we began seeing more FORK-TAILED and ASHY STORM-PETRELS. PINK-FOOTED and SOOTY SHEARWATERS were common in this area and were sprinkled with quite a few POMARINE JAEGERS and a couple of LONG-TAILED JAEGERS (which was a lifer for both of us!) More whales were feeding along this line as we headed south through the shipping lanes. That’s where the krill was and along with drawing whales, it attracts birds according to Alvaro and the captain.

The next hour and a half was spent repeating the chumming process and we added a few SABINE’S GULLS in brilliant plumage and a few distinctly patterned BULLER’S SHEARWATERS. We also got our best looks at COMMON and ARCTIC TERNS for the day along with more of the same birds close enough to see well without binoculars which was critical for me since every time I put the binos to my eyes the queasiness increased exponentially.

We made a big arc toward the southeast, recrossing into San Mateo County with the swell and chop at our back, so the only unpleasant part was when we slowed to drift through the chum lines. We didn’t really see any new birds but continued to get good close up views that the photographers were drooling over, as we recrossed the shipping lanes and headed for the coast about 10 miles south of Half Moon Bay. The wind began to drop off to a breeze and we spotted a couple more pods of humpback whales included two that were rumoured to be making an attempt at mating. They were pretty close to each other and breathing heavily. We were drifting close enough to notice.

As we approached the harbor we made one more pass close to the beach adding one COMMON LOON. Once inside the harbor five BLACK OYSTERCATCHERS flew over the boat. We tied up close to 5PM, and joined Alvaro, Jim Lomax, John Sterling, Dominik, the kid, Mosur, and a few others for a sunny afternoon beer. I was finally able to eat something so Bob and I shared Chowder with Fish & Chips. We were now at 51 for San Francisco County and 54 for San Mateo County.

We were so tired we went north on 101 instead of south for our hotel and wasted about 33 minutes of valuable sleep time! We still had some paperwork and planning before hitting the sack.