Candy!!

Considering Halloween is tomorrow, and Halloween candy is one of the best things about Halloween, I figured it would be appropriate to talk about candy!! And for those of you who didn't know, my family owns a candy store, which just so happens to be my summer/Christmas/Easter job.  Our store is called Giambri's Quality Sweets, and it's in Clementon, NJ.  We make everything from chocolate covered pretzels to lemon sticks to candy canes.  Each year, we have our customers vote for the candy cane flavor of the year.  This years flavors are: Blood Orange, Cookies & Cream, Cake Batter, Irish Cream, and Strawberry Banana.  Click here to go vote! The deadline is November 1st!

Week 8 Already!

Can you believe we are approaching week 8 already??  Time sure does fly when you are having fun.  Everyone has been doing a great job facilitating the attribute lessons.  Kirsten and I are scheduled to facilitate on the 3rd, and the bar sure has been set high.  That's one of the great things about this program, everyone works so hard, that it gives you that extra push to go above and beyond in your own work.

At work, we are getting ready for Halloween, and the kids are getting excited.  My team and I are going to be Thing One, Thing Two, Thing Three, and the Cat in the Hat.  It should turn out cute! And not to mention it was a quick and easy costume!  We bought red shirts, printed out the Thing One, Two, and Three graphics, and we are going to pin them to our shirts.  I'm not sure yet if we are going to go all out with the blue hair!! I'll keep you posted!!  If you haven't thought of something yet, Pinterest is full of ideas!

Nearpod

One of my colleagues introduced me to this great tool- Nearpod.  After checking it out, I can't wait to use it in my classroom.  Basically, it is a tool that lets you share a "powerpoint" presentation on your student's iPads or computers.  Once they sign into the session, you are in control of their screen.  When you advance, their screen advances to the next slide.  It also has the option for assessment and allows you to see student responses right away.  She has already used this tool in her classroom, and said that her student's loved it and it was a great way to check student understanding.  I'm looking forward to the weeks ahead when our iPads will be ready and I can try it out in my classroom. :)

Rewards vs. Punishment

As I was reading for this week, I noticed that one of the tips for trainers of the Functionalistic Theory was trainers should not punish learners who fail.  After reading that, I thought to myself do some trainers really punish learners who fail?!  I guess that was the teacher in me, because I immediately thought of my students, and I thought how could someone punish them for failing.  As a teacher, when a student fails, it reflects on me, and I would never punish a student for failing.  I would do everything I could to help them to succeed.  Then, after I thought about it some more, I had to tell myself that we are talking about adult learners and not children.  Even still, I don't think that adults should be punished for something they failed. However, in the workplace, if you fail to meet a goal, or you fail to do your job correctly, something needs to happen.  And that raises the question rewards or punishment?  I came across this article that discusses reward vs. punishment and what motives people more.

October is here! Believe it or not I heard someone say the other day that there's less than 90 days until Christmas.  There's actually only 80 days left now!  I found this cute website, that counts down to Christmas.  It even tells you how many seconds are left.  When you think that we only have 80 days left, that sounds so crazy since school just started and summer just got over, but before we know it, Christmas will be here.  As I've gotten older, I've realized that time really does fly by.