Lessons Learned: Student Teaching Week 2

1.  "Working through" illness is just stupid.  I need to just stay home when I don't feel well.
2.  "Creative" and "free-thinker" are code words for poor classroom management.
3.  Seventh graders are really great!  They are interesting, but not yet jaded.
4.  If there is no accountability for homework, only 2 out of 30 students will do the homework.
5.  Seating charts are kind of important.
6.  Talking all day when you have a cough is the pits.
7.  I have bad placement luck.
8.  Always make time for a bathroom break during lunch.
9.  When they say it's not a good idea to take an additional class during student teaching, they aren't kidding.

The end.

Fun Times!

Do you ever come to the realization that something has got to give, and that really the only thing that can give is the hours you spend sleeping, so you get that sort of yucky premonition that you will likely spend the next 12 or 13 weeks completely sleep deprived?  Yeah.  That's my realization of the day.

My day today:
5:50  wake up, get ready, pack lunch, etc.
7:00 drive to school
7:20 find out that my mentor teacher has the flu, so I get to teach today
7:45-2:00 teach 7th graders how to graph proportion tables
2:30 go home, eat leftover pizza from fridge
3:00-4:00 work on geometry proofs for my geometry class
4:00 Elise and Frank get home from school, Elise goes to a friends house so I can take Frank to piano
4:10 convince Frank that he does in fact need to go to piano lessons, drive to said lessons
4:25 realize I left the piano books sitting by the front door
4:35 explain to Shauna that I'm an idiot and I forgot the piano books
5:00 get back home
5:15 leave to go to the library to meet geometry study group
5:30-9:30 work with study group to finish massive homework assignment due tomorrow (32 proofs)
9:45 get home, realize I'm starving, eat more leftover pizza
10:00-12:00 finish working on the massive homework assignment so I can turn it in tomorrow

Now I get to finally go to sleep so that I can get up tomorrow by 6 to start it all again.
I saw Elise for about a total of 15 minutes today.  I saw Frank for slightly more than that, due to the futile drive to and from piano lessons.  How sad is it to only see your kid for 15 min a day?   And I ate too much pizza today.  My geometry class has a test on Monday, so hopefully by Tuesday of next week things will calm down a bit.

p.s. If you are confused, my geometry class is Math 3100 through Dixie College, which I need to get a math teaching endorsement (not geometry that I am teaching to students).  The class is taught during the day while I am student teaching, so I get to teach myself from the book, then do all the assignments.  I get to take the tests at night at the testing center at the college.  Fun times!

Mix-ups

Here is the paper Elise came home with today. 

 
Nice right?  Decent penmanship.  She wrote what she was supposed to.  She capitalized the right letters.  Oh, except she wrote that her name is Ellie instead of Elise.  She has this thing with her friend Kennedy.  Kennedy calls her Ellie, and she calls Kennedy Kenzie.  It's just their thing and they think it's really fun and clever.

So I tell Elise that it's okay for her to play that game with Kennedy, but at school she needs to write Elise on her papers.  At this point she has a little tantrum, insisting that Ellie is her real name.  So I guess I just got it wrong on the birth paperwork.  Silly me.  Maybe I should just explain that to her teacher...

Super Backfire

So today, I went and got a flu vaccine.  It seemed like a good idea.  The district office was offering them for $5, and the program I am in recommends that we get as many vaccines as possible since we'll be spending time with all the germ-y students in the schools.  Plus, our health insurance has this point system thing we have to do every year to avoid paying a premium, and getting a flu shot was worth one point.  So it's a no lose situation, right? 

Except that exactly six hours later, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Cold chills, aching muscles and joints, fever, etc.  So fun.  All I can do is lay in my bed like a slug.  Good thing I have a super awesome husband who always picks up the slack.  Hopefully this is a very short lived thing...

RIP Little Red Car

I guess not quite RIP, but I found out on Friday that the A/C compressor is broken, and I'm completely unwilling to spend $1,000 on the car.  It's cooling down, so for now, I'm just going to keep driving it, and in the spring when it starts getting hot, we'll decided what to do.  I'm a little sad that my car is finally reaching the "dying" stage, but I'm sure a few new car test drives will make me feel better.  Aaron and I were looking at some cars online, and he asked me if I really wanted a bare bones model, or if I wanted some upgrades.  I guess one of the perks of driving your car for 14 years is that the bare bones models are an upgrade.  Electronic door locks, automatic windows, a CD player?  That is living large.  I don't need upgrades.

Anyhoo, think of me on those hot days we have left before it officially cools down.  I'll be sweating a little, I bet.

High School, round 2

Well, I just survived my second first day of high school.  What fun.  Most of them are bigger than me (surprise surprise).  It was fun, but as a person who hasn't had to do "stuff" all day for a long time, 8:00 to 3:00 sure is a drag. 
There is sure a lot of PDA in high school.  Mostly before/after school and at lunch, but still.  Maybe that's one more reason to consider intermediate or middle school.  Another reason to consider intermediate/middle school: the high school common core!  Yikes.  I feel sorry for the kids who are sophomores this year.  They probably all hate math with a passion.  Every year since sixth grade they have been "new math program" guinea pigs.  Poor things.  And the teachers have very little resources to help them with the transition.  They don't even have textbooks.  There aren't any textbooks even written yet.  It's kind of a mess, and a lot of extra work for math teachers.  Right now I'm so glad I requested a middle school for student teaching.  At least they've had a couple of years to get used to their common core, so it's not going to be quite as sticky.  On the other hand, all my lesson plan assignments, etc., this fall have to be written for the high school common core, so, yeah, that's going to be so fun. 
The end.

First Day of Kindergarten (with a few distractions thrown in)

I would like to start with a quick rant about USB cords.  Why do they all have to be different?  Ever time I want to download sub-par pictures or charge my mp3 player or put music on my phone or do whatever I have to find the right stupid cord out of my pile of all the USB cords that have been included with all the various electronic devices we have accumuluated.  Why can't they all be the same?  Aaron and I have mp3 players that were purchased less than a year apart.  They are the same brand and look identical except for color, and yet, they have slightly different USB cords that are not compatible with one another.  Anyway, long story short, I did find the right cord for the camera (sub-par pictures to follow).  Rant over.

Next distraction.  As I was downloading the pictures, I realized there were pictures from Elise's little birthday party, which I guess I never posted on this here blog.  So here they are, perhaps a little late.  She turned the big "5", and wanted a rock and roll party.  I made my first ever "shape" cake, and totally hated it (not how it turned out, just the entire process).  From now on, I'm sticking to the rectangle thing, with a little picture thrown on top.  Anywho, here's the cake:

The party was too long ago for me to actually remember what they did, but I think they all had a good time doing girly, rock and roll type things.  I also seem to remember that they ate a lot of fruit.  Anyway, now that we have establised that Elise is 5, we can move on to the whole starting school thing.

I had an orientation for my school program all day today, so I had to miss out on the entire "get on the bus" thing.  Aaron took the morning off so he could see her on her way.  She was determined to ride the bus to school.  I told her a few times that Aaron would be more than happy to drive her and make sure she got to the right place, but she insisted that the bus would be perfect.  So Aaron took her to the bus stop this afternoon, and I guess everything worked out.  When she got home she did mention that at one point (after recess I think) she went into the wrong class for a few minutes, and the teacher there showed her where she was supposed to be.  It's nice to know that your kid is confident enough to just go with it, and not get upset or feel bad when they do something wrong, or get lost, or whatever.  She said when she got back to the right class, all the kids were coloring a picture, so she just sat down and started coloring too.  She also said they had 4 recesses (maybe more), so I'm not sure I believe everything she says.  She can be prone to a little exaggeration.  Anyway, here she is on her first day of school, except after school not before school, and she has an otter pop.  Like I said before, sub par.

***Short Flashback to Last Week***

Speaking of first days of school, or rather second, here's the sub par pic of Frank on his second day of school (because we forgot on the first day).  The sun was really bright, and he couldn't keep his eyes open.  Photography at its best.

That morning, Elise woke up just as we were leaving to walk to the bus stop.  She insisted on coming.  She also insisted that I snap a couple of pictures of her.  After all, she was wearing her beautiful pink nightgown.

So there you have it.  All the pictures I have taken since June.