So Good!

Hello again!

I really don't even know what to tell you. Teaching is an absolute joy. I LOVE my school and my students. It's still kind of hard to believe that I'm actually a teacher now. It's starting to catch up with me how much work it actually is!

My supervisor came to observe me for the first time on Friday. I was absolutely nervous. I feel like I'm a competent individual, but I hate feeling like people are watching me, especially when I know they are taking notes. But, it went really well! Here's part of what she told me:

-Your first group of students were very anxious to learn, do their best and please you. GREAT!
-I observed a real comfort level between you and your students.
-Great positive comments were given to students who were working hard and doing a great job.
-You did a really super job of redirecting your students.
-You did a great job of helping your students during their writing lesson, but you didn't give them answers. You helped guide them in the right direction.

Seriously, the only thing she told me to change had to do with one specific child who was having some behavior issues and distracting other students.

This really made me feel a lot better about my teaching. I mean, look at that! Obviously I'm doing okay.

Then again, that's kindergarten, my dream. Tomorrow she's coming to watch me teach 5th graders some vocabulary relating to the Revolutionary War *gag*.

Tomorrow is also when I start full time teaching, by myself, all day, every day, until (at least) February 14th.

Wish me luck!

Week 3 Already?

As some people have oh-so-kindly pointed out, it's been a while since I've written last. I was so pumped about writing this but my goodness, student teaching keeps you busy! (Especially when you're working 2 jobs on top of that, but totally not the point).

My first placement is going extremely well. I absolutely love it. My mentor teacher is great. The other teachers are wonderful. And the students are fantastic. Being a Catholic school, these students are taught morals and manners a lot more than in a public school system and it shows. They are so respectful, it's unbelievable.

So, last week my mentor teacher's mother was in the hospital. It was a pretty serious deal. Because of that, I actually ended up teaching 2 1/2 full days by myself (with very, very minimal planning). It was crazy. Some of the kids tried testing me so much! But I suppose that's normal.

Overall, I'd say it went fairly well. Obviously if I had known beforehand and had some time to plan, things might have gone a little smoother but hey, that's teaching. You've got to make the best of it!

Last week I also had professional development all about the I-ELDA (Iowa English Language Development Assessment). Basically, this is the test we give our English language learners to measure their language development. It was actually quite interesting and I was bummed that since I'm not yet a licensed teacher, I can't get certified to administer the test. (Which would have been extremely helpful since my school has over 150 ELLs).

This week, PD (Professional Development,  try to keep up) was a joke. Absolute joke. And this isn't just me being a slacker student teacher. Seriously, my teacher was like "Why are we even here?" The whole thing was chaos, not well thought out at all. However, I guess spending 2 hours on a Monday afternoon doing that was better than sitting through an entire day of school.

The rest of this week I'm taking over Kindergarten centers to do a unit on Pond Life (Yeah, I know). My supervisor is coming to watch me on Friday so fingers crossed!

Anyway, that's been my week. Adiós!

Days 1 & 2

I had every intention of posting after my first day yesterday but clearly that did not happen. So, while I ride this fun little bike at the gym, I'll update you on my last 2 days. :)

Day 1 - A. It was a 2 hour delay because of the weather, so I had literally no idea what time to show up. We never had this conversation!  Haha. So, I just showed up 2 hours later than normal and called it good. (Turns out that was an excellent guess).

Since it was an unexpected shortened day, we literally just skipped our first 2 hours of what was planned - 20/20/20. Which you'll hear about once I finally do it!

The first thing I did was go in to observe (that's all I do the first week or so - especially the first day) the kindergarten class doing their literacy centers. Generally there'd be a volunteer there during that time, but they didn't come because of the delay, so the kids in that rotation were supposed to play literacy games on the ipads. Surprise! All the ipads were dead. So, Miss Shelby (That's me!) got to jump right in first thing and play a literacy game with them, where they had to read me sight words. Simple enough.

After that it was already lunch time, which only means one thing - lunch duty. Holy moly when you get that many kids from age 4 to age 7 together in one room, it gets loud. It was also freezing and I was starving. But I made it through and then got to have lunch in the teacher's lounge (I still remember when that was a forbidden place and nobody was sure if it actually existed). It was actually a lot of fun. I really like my teacher and all the other ones who were around at that point.
After lunch was small guided reading with 5th grade, then eventually 4th grade. Both groups did the same thing of going over vocabulary words and then answering some questions to prove they understand. For example, one of the words was "scarce", so they had to answer "Name something that is scarce." to show us they understand. Again, pretty simple. All of our ELL students are pretty high in proficiency level, so it's not too bad.

Oh, and best part? 3 of the kids I coached in soccer all summer go to this school & 1 is even in my kindergarten class! 

Day 2 - Today started at normal time, but since it's Wednesday and I'm at a Catholic school, we started our day with mass. This was an extremely new experience to me, as I'm not at all Catholic. However, it was actually really interesting to see how they ran their service. I am a Christian, so we worship the same God, just a little differently. Although it was different, it was kind of nice to be able to freely worship even though I was at work/school. Makes me kind of wonder what a Christian school would be like. :) It did leave me with multiple questions though so I think I have some research to do tonight.

Not only do I need to look up some Catholic practices, I also apparently need to educate myself with what's happening in South Sudan. We have a large Sudanese population at my school and so the war was a large part of mass this morning (the Father & Deacon are also from Sudan. So that was really neat.)

Today was also an early out so we really didn't have much to do today at all. Our schedule was entirely messed up. All we did today was help the kindergarten (which makes me so happy!) with a picture - word sort of the short a family.

After school let out I made a word wall in the classroom and then went home! (Well, to work. And now I'm here.)

Tomorrow will be my first FULL day with all my "classes" and my first time meeting my 20/20/20 group, which will soon be my own group to work with independently.

Until then, have a wonderful evening, day, week...whatever it is until I get back to you again! (I have a lot to do & a lot to research - Catholicism, South Sudan, and a bunch of stuff so I can impress at my Des Moines Public School District interview on Saturday!)

Surprise! It's really cold.

So, I was all ready to start student teaching at Holy Family tomorrow. All ready if you don't count forgetting to look through the Journey's book (I wasn't going to be teaching it though, so no worries), not remembering what time I was supposed to show up, not knowing if I get to eat lunch at school for free, stressing because I work until 10 tonight and a lot of other last minute things.

Fortunately/Unfortunately (It's a little of both, really) Holy Family (and a ton of other schools) cancelled school tomorrow.

So yes, now I have another day off of school. Every student's dream, right? Only, I'm not a student anymore. I'm a teacher. And while I was experiencing my normal blast of anxiety over starting something new, I was actually looking forward to it.

On the plus side, I get to go see my kids tomorrow at the day care! I still can't imagine not being there 40+ hours a week like I've been doing the last few months.

For those of you experiencing this crazy cold front; stay inside, stay warm, and God bless. ♡