It’s flying by…

14 days of student teaching
3 days to write the last TPA

Those are the bald chronological facts.

By this time next month, I’ll have been finished with the credential year for nearly a week. Between now and then, there are a myriad of details to take care of. I’m not worried. It will all come together, as it always does. I’m looking for jobs and dreaming of teaching overseas for a year in Japan as I do when I want some adventure…because I’m not the biggest homebody you’ll ever meet or the type of person who is happy to curl up and read a book all day! 🙂

After this is all over in three weeks and I’ve “recovered” for a few weeks, I know that I’ll miss seeing my credential peeps in class and will miss my little 1st graders as much as I miss my 6th graders. But that will all be in three-plus weeks. For now, I am trying not to strain through the present because I can taste summer and am ready to feel the thrill of success and realized dreams.

There haven’t been any new blog posts for so long because I’ve been too caught up in work and other activities. It’s also because so many little and big things have happened that it was hard to know how to distill the information and to share the essence of all the experiences of the last couple of months. Today seemed a little simpler. Three more colloquium meetings. Three more weeks of teaching. Then it’s over. It’s so close to the end.

7th Week

Tags

book list, job applications, Teaching

I didn’t get around to making a 5th or 6th week of student teaching update.

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…and I think I’ve blocked out the little milestones from the 7th week for the most part. Not that it was bad– it was a great week– it just went by really fast and nothing too out of the ordinary happened. The master teacher was gone at a conference Tuesday-Friday so it was me and two different subs throughout the week. One sub had her bunny eaten by a raccoon.

My mind feels like a sieve. I’m not writing things down enough and keep forgetting things. 🙂

I’m applying for a job at a school that wants me to list the titles and authors that I’ve read in the last 12 months. That is the coolest application question ever! The whole application is more fun than work to fill out. We’ll see what happens.

4th Week of Student Teaching

Tags

Student Teaching

I took the RICA yesterday. It’s a test that is supposed to show that a credential candidate knows how to teach reading and language arts to children K-8th. I hope I passed. I think I passed. I have to wait a month to find out. Sidenote: during the two and a half hours that I took the test, someone in our room was always out with the restroom pass from the first moment until I left. I’ve never seen a group of adults so constantly in the restroom before. Nervous bladder, perhaps?

The chicken mummy is drying out. The salt doesn’t draw out much moisture from week to week anymore.

Halfway point. Four weeks down and four to go. It feels unreal that I’m already half-way through the first teaching assignment.

Midterm evaluation from the master teacher. I need to work on volume when I speak in front of the class. Apparently, my sweet voice can cause the students to tune out.

Starting a social studies unit on ancient Greece tomorrow and being observed by the college supervisor. It’ll be good to get that out of the way early in the week.

Job lead on a place that I would absolutely love to work- a long commute being the only drawback.

Encouraging time of accountability with some great friends.

Can’t wait until next weekend!

3rd Week Student Teaching

Tags

Student Teaching

First parent/teacher conference. It was interesting to see three interesting people discuss an interesting kid. Poor kid. I would be more descriptive but I don’t want to type anything that I wouldn’t want to show up on the front page of the New York Times. You never know.

First time introducing honored students in an assembly. I said, “We would like to honor R______ and C______.” and passed the microphone down the line.

First time wearing pumps to work. I got the lowest heel I could find. My feet hurt.

First time using a Glasslock for lunch. The glass rectangular dish has a leak-proof snap on lid. No leaks and you can take the lid off and zap the food in the microwave. Definitely a high point in my week.

First time teaching 6th grade math. O, math! The bane of my existence! I hoped we had said goodbye in high school. Math will probably haunt me the rest of my life. It hurts my head. I lack the proper cellular arrangements necessary to compute with ease and alacrity.

2nd Week Student Teaching

Tags

ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, mummified chicken, Student Teaching

I just started my second week of student teaching in a 5th/6th grade split class. The master teacher is wonderful and the students are the easiest group I’ve ever worked with as a whole. Last week I was struggling with yet another cold but I’m mostly recovered now and much more excited and energized than I was last week (also a result of the rain?).

Mrs. L (master teacher) let me do a couple of language arts and social studies last week so I was able to start the kids into their ancient Egypt unit and am taking over the responsibility for social studies this week. The teacher has it mostly planned out through ancient Egypt with the basic structure so it’s easy for me to take that and tweak it or add in bits of fun information. The kids were pleasantly horrified today to learn that corpses in ancient Egypt who were destined for mummification had their brains drawn out through the nose with a hook. Mrs. L wanted the kids to do a project on Friday- something “memorable”. I googled for a few minutes and found a neat project that the kids might enjoy even more than I will. Mrs. L thought it was a great idea, too, so I’m going to start getting ready to mummify a chicken with the students on Friday. After the chicken is embalmed, we’ll bury it in the school yard, and they can dig it up in a few months to see what it looks like. I can’t wait. This is going to be really interesting.

Here is my day:

5:30 Get up, dress breakfast
6:30 Leave, listen to 2 podcasts in the car
7:30 Arrive at the school, put lunch in fridge, put stuff down in classroom
8:00 pick up kids from classroom
3:30-5:00 staff meeting or get ready for the next day, leave somewhere in that time frame
5:00-6:30 arrive home have listened to two lectures from the teaching company
9:00 go to bed having completed the evening routine of dinner, pack lunch, devotions, review tomorrow’s lessons

That’s about it. Homework, church, Bible study on the weekends. Read for bookclub somewhere in there. Think about the RICA coming up in less than three weeks. Think of great ideas for teaching a unit on ancient Greece in a few weeks (something I’ve wanted to do for years) and scale back since there isn’t time for everything we could do.

I’d like to update more frequently and am hoping for once a week. It’s probably going to be about student teaching most of the time because that’s what my life is about right now. 🙂