Work-Wear Woes

*This marks the first of my personal blog posts.  School's out for summer, but I'm continuing to blog for myself and anyone who decides to read it.*

Well, the higher-ups in the restaurant where I work decided that it was time for a uniform change.  We've been wearing blue shirts with awful boxy vests for 3 years.  The servers are now to wear white button-down shirts with black ties and an official-issue black apron.  The bartender's uniform is similar: white button-down shirts and black ties, but no apron, and the option to wear a black vest (employee provided--no standard issue).

I work some shifts as a server and some as a bartender, so I get to use both versions of the uniform.  The button down shirts and black ties were easy enough to find. (Thank you jiffyshirts.com and Mens Wearhouse!)  The vest, however, was impossible.  I found denim vests.  I found suede vests.  I even found crocheted vests.  The only black business-like vests to be found were for men, which would take me back to the ill-fitting, boxy cut that we had before.

I considered not wearing a vest when I bartend.  It seemed like the easiest thing to do--I already had the rest of the uniform pieces.  Then I found out that all of the male bartenders had decided to wear vests.  I pictured the scene on a Saturday night, with me and two of the guys working.  They would be wearing vests and I would not.  From the guest's point of view, either (a) I forgot my vest, or (b) I was a server that had jumped behind the bar to help out.  I didn't particularly care for either of those impressions, so I had to make the vest happen somehow.

Enter Rosey, my trusty dressform.  (She's blue and has no legs, so she reminds me of the robot maid from The Jetsons.)  After doing some Google Image browsing of celebrities wearing vests and deciding what I wanted mine to look like, I broke out the style tape and "drew" a vest on Rosey.

I wanted to accentuate my womanly curves rather than hide them, so I went with a scoop in the front, and a three-piece back.  The back was more because I don't have much tailoring experience.  If I needed to change the flare in the side seams, I wanted to not have to re-cut the whole back piece!

My next step was to create my pattern.  I use a cotton muslin because it's cheap and I can write on it with any pen.  I use different colors to mean different things so when I go to cut it out I know how to put the pieces back together!

As you can see, I experimented with different ways to do the side-back panels.  Ultimately I decided that the peplum just looked weird and went with the flat piece.

I used polyester suiting from JoAnn Fabrics for the finished product and lined it with a polyester lining. I had grand ideas of putting in pockets for pens, a notepad and my phone, but quickly decided that was a little too complicated for my first piece of business-wear.  I'm glad I nixed those ideas, because I had enough trouble with the basics!

I've never lined a garment before, and I didn't do much reading on how it should be done.  I ended up re-doing the back lining twice because it was too big and hung below the actual vest!  When I was sewing the side seams to put it all together, I had the outside on top so I could make sure the stitching was exactly where I wanted it, but then the lining got pulled through the machine faster than the suiting (I guess I should have used more pins), so it started bubbling and puckering all over the place!  Thank goodness for seam rippers!

I took the buttons from my old work vest instead of buying new ones, and that was simple enough.  The buttonholes, on the other hand, were a nightmare!  I have an automatic buttonhole presser foot, so they're supposed to be easy: line it up, press the pedal, and let the machine do all the work.  I had perfect buttonholes all over my practice piece--two layers of suiting, just like where the buttonholes were going--so I thought I would be fine.  Apparently though, my buttonhole foot is crappy and cheap. It would get stuck on a spot, or reverse before it was time, making the buttonhole way too small for the button.  I only needed to make 3 buttonholes, but it took me two hours of careful planning, frustrated arm-flailing, and trying to rip out thousands of tiny zig-zag stitches to finally get them done.

After a bit of hand-stitching to secure the wonky buttonholes and hide the lining debacle, I'm pretty happy with the result.  I would never let anyone see the inside of the vest because of the lining, but I'm proud to have completely "finished" a garment--no exposed seams--which is not something that I had done before.

I did wear it to work last night, and got some interesting comments.  One of the girl servers said she loved it and wished that our old vest had been like this.  "Maybe corporate will let us all wear them.  It's really cute."  I didn't tell her that I had made it myself and it took much, much longer than it should have.  I just accepted the compliment and swore to myself that I would not agree to make one for anyone else!

One of the guy servers said that it looked like a Beerfest girl's outfit in the front (I took that as a compliment) and a SWAT bullet-proof vest in the back.  I wasn't really sure how to take that.  I guess it means that I look tough.  If I were to make a new one, I would probably not scoop the front quite as wide, and I would do a halter neck with the bottom coming back into a simple strap instead of the racer back that I used.

New uniform, complete with tie and nametag!

Overall, it was well-received, I felt good in it, and management didn't try to tell me that it wasn't "spec," so I think it was a success!

Web 2.what?

I never did see the notification about the update for the internet, so when I heard the term "web 2.0," I had no idea what it meant.  I had to use the original web 1.0 to figure it out.

The best way I can describe the concept of "web 2.0" is not in the way that the internet itself has changed, but how we as a society use it.  When the internet first became accessible to American households, we posted information on websites, sent letters electronically, and used chat rooms to talk to people we had never seen.  Today people focus their whole lives on the internet through programs like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram.  I got an invitation to a baby shower on Facebook last week for a girl I haven't seen face-to-face for 2 years.  Since the last time I saw her, she got a new boyfriend, got engaged, got married, and is now about to have a baby.  All of this I learned through Facebook and Twitter.  There were no phone calls, no invitations brought to me by the US post office, and no congratulatory hugs.  Web 2.0 encompasses the social aspect of the internet more than the utility.  Some people's whole social world is based online.  That is how I understand "web 2.0." Specifically, it seems that the web 2.0 tools are the ones that involve social networking online.

The trick, now that we understand that we are living in a web 2.0 world, is determining how to use it to our advantage.  As a future teacher, I can see many advantages to incorporating web 2.0 into my classroom.  Web 2.0 gives me the opportunity to join online groups with other educators.  We can network among our team, between school districts, across the country, even internationally.  We can share lesson plans, documents, or even data on new teaching methods for professional development.  My administrators will be able to check in and see what my class is doing without being intrusive and potentially disturbing an activity or lecture.

The biggest advantage to using web 2.0 in a classroom is the way that it can benefit student involvement.  If my friends and I spent all day writing term papers to each other, then I probably wouldn't have minded writing a term paper for class.  That would just be what we did--the normal thing.  Unfortunately, students don't write term papers for fun, so when they are assigned a research paper students moan and complain and find any reason at all to not do it.  What if we consider the way that students communicate today.  What if we let them communicate their research to us as teachers the way that they would communicate to each other?  Many of the software programs available to schools and teachers mimic the social networking sites students use all the time.  Teachers can set up assignments involving discussions just like the ones students have every day on Facebook.  Students will be much more excited to do their homework if it seems easy, and what could be easier than that?

You may say I'm a dreamer...

Not actually me,
but I like to think this is how I look when I daydream.

I like to spend most of my free time daydreaming about the day when I finally have a teaching job.  The children are all angels that love to learn, assignments are graded automatically, I never have to attend staff meetings, and my only interactions with parents are to brag about how well their children are doing.  Then I wake up and realize that I will never find a real-life situation as nice as that so I start to mentally prepare myself for the reality of teaching math to secondary students.  One of the issues I will need to deal with is keeping the students interested in what they should be learning.  I need to either avoid or be able to answer the age-old question:     

“When are we ever going to use this?”

www.wolframalpha.com

 I plan on using a few different technologies in my future classroom to keep students interested: a digital camera, a document camera, scientific and/or graphing calculators, and hopefully a Smartboard along with iPads loaded with math-oriented apps like WolframAlpha.

The digital camera is for me to use in my lesson planning.  Having visual aids of some kind is always helpful for keeping people interested—adults as well as children.  These can get stale after a while if they are clip art, from the same teacher-supply book, or randomly sourced Internet pictures.  The visual aids can start to seem hokey or cheesy and lose their attention-retaining properties.  With a digital camera, you can get the same basic content to help with visual aids, but with people, things, or places that the students know.  The pictures themselves, of course, would depend on the lesson.  If we were talking about angles, for example, I could use a picture of the doorway to the classroom to show a right angle, a propped open book for an acute angle, and a top-down view of an open locker for an obtuse angle.  This would give students some real things that they see every day, so they can start to relate what they’re learning to life.

Document cameras have been extremely useful in the math classes I have taken, so I would like to continue using them when I teach.  I still like the chalkboard for a lot of writing, but it is so nice to be able to show smaller things using the document camera.  I could use it to show congruent and similar shapes without having to worry about my drawing on the board being exactly right.  I could even use it to show the key to a pop-quiz if I wanted the students to self-evaluate their papers.

At the middle school level, I would keep a classroom set of scientific calculators.  We would use them to talk about square roots, order of operations, and all sorts of things.  At the high school level, it would probably be graphing calculators, but depending on the class content, I may require the students to have their own at home as well.  In the beginning the calculators on their own serve as a way to keep students interested.  They are new and fun to play on, so they get excited when you start handing them out. 

A Smartboard would be an excellent technology for a math class.  It can connect to the document camera, and allow me to show graphs, modeling simulations, and anything from the computer.  I can use PowerPoint as a classroom routine, having a welcome message up at the beginning of each class, and even use it for review games before tests.

iPads would be nice for my classroom in theory, but if they are not for only my math class, they could get a little unwieldy.  Ideally, I would hand out the iPads when there was a use for them in my lesson, just like the calculators.  There are so many wonderful math visualization, modeling, and equation-solving apps out there that they could be an extremely valuable resource in keeping students engaged.  If the students use their iPads for multiple classes, whether they are rented or student-owned, there will inevitably be distractions.  These could be games the student has downloaded on their personal iPad, or even just homework for another class on a school-issued one.  We must tread carefully when giving the students power like this!

I do hope that I can find a job with a technology-rich school.  There is so much you can do to supplement a lesson and keep the students interested when you have new, exciting technology at your fingertips!

Yes, I am a tourist.

I am a frequent tourist on the Digital Generation Island--I don't live there, but I know all the locals.  I didn't grow up with today's technology at my fingertips, but I was growing up as it was emerging and have adapted with it.

When I was in elementary school we had Storybook Weaver, Math Blaster and MS Paint.  When I got to middle school, there were video announcements and a computer class where we learned to word process and create PowerPoint-type presentations.  In high school there were classes for video news, website design, and our assignments frequently required internet research.  I graduated before the social media boom when bloggers were mostly conspiracy theorists and tabloid reporters.

Kids are learning technology earlier and earlier!

Today I use technology for everything I do.  I use the entire Adobe Creative Suite for photos, movies, and pattern-making projects.  I use Excel to track our household budget, grocery list, and anticipate my net paycheck.  (I'm a waitress, so the amount of money I make can vary wildly from week to week.)  Powerpoint has become my go-to when I'm making invitations or notecards.  I use my iCloud devices synced together to organize my life from morning alarms to when to pay the bills to a reminder to pick up milk on the way home.  While I enjoy social media and the opportunities that can come from it, I don't live my life in it.  I don't even have a Facebook or Pinterest account, and this is the first blog post I have ever made.

I have used most of the technology the students featured in their portraits at one time or another.  I have never used it to the extent these students are, though.  They are really going above and beyond because they love creating!  I love seeing the passion these kids display when they talk about their projects, and they are really doing some impressive things.

I had visions of using technology in my lessons to keep the students focused and interested, but I hadn't really considered letting them be the ones creating with technology.  There are a lot of educational apps out there for computers and mobile devices, but why not let them design apps and websites?  Why not let them record a song inspired by a book in Garage Band rather than write a book report?  There are so many ways to let the students express themselves through creative technology that I hadn't thought of.

21st century learning tools seem to span a very broad spectrum.  I think the traditional books, paper, pencils, and chalkboard still have an important place in learning, especially alongside the new technology.  I love that a lot of schools are providing students with laptops and tablets so everyone can enjoy the benefits of using technology in education even if they don't have access to that equipment at home.

I am excited to see that the widespread use of these technologies has led to cross-platform compatibility that we didn't have before.  When I was in high school, I used a computer program to compose/record a song for a project.  I had a floppy disk with the recording and printed out the sheet music to turn in.  When my teacher went to listen to the song, she couldn't open the file because the school didn't have the same software that I used at home.  Now there is a lot more standardization of file types so that media players can read all types of files, and media creating programs can save in multiple formats.  Now when a student decides to use technology, they can just bring their flash drive to school and use the smart board to present their project to the whole class!



References (in order of appearance):

Edutopia.org Dive into the Future of Learning
Baby photo courtesy of John Robertson
Edutopia.org Youth Portraits
School supplies photo from NBCPhiladelphia.com