I have been up all night trying to get things done for this morning. Around 11 I felt like I couldn't be productive so I caught an hour and a half worth of zzzzzz's.

I.am.so.sick.of.writing.about.practicum.

Pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of it.

Can I talk about my last day another day? Spoiler: I got presents!

When will I have the chance to sleep? Today is my 8am-9pm day.

If I make it through day and tomorrow I deserve a big hug from anyone who is reading this (that probably only means you Denny and Yoko, but you better be waiting for me with arms wide open).

I've spent the last 5 minutes not so wisely so back to work work work.

Today is a pretty big day for Miss Ross. She has been cordially invited to join the kiddos of her class in the cafeteria for a turkey dinner!

Last week, one of the students asked, "Miss Ross, do you like roast turkey?"
To which I replied, "Well, of course!"
Everyday since, she has reminded me to bring money on Thursday to eat lunch.

I have oodles of things to do tonight! I need to tie up all the loose ends from practicum like getting things signed and evaluations filled out. I plan on writing cards to each of the kids individually so that may be quite a job. They are all such special students and they deserve to know!

I want to get something little for my cooperating teacher, but I am stumped. I don't want to get her something teacher related because I want this to be just for her. Any ideas?

Well....
I had a meeting with my student teaching coordinator in which I found out my placement. To be completely honest, I needed a day to process before I really wanted to think about it.

I've just been having a funky week. I am absolutely exhausted from the semester and all the craziness is catching up with my like a tidal wave. I went to my student teaching meeting with not much enthusiasm just nervousness.

I will be teaching in a small rural school that is K-8 and has 200 students total. My cooperating teacher teaches social studies and science grades 4-6. I was completely confused when I looked at my placement and saw 4-6 and asked my coordinator about. It turns out I will have to arrange to work with some of the other teachers so that I can teach all of the disciplines.

The coordinator threw so much at us at this meeting that I was already overwhelmed and the actual placement news struck me in a funny way. I guess I was just having a bad day, but I went home and cried. I think I'm just scared about the unfamiliar. At that moment, I couldn't possibly look at the positive. I needed to process before I could think logically.

This morning I woke up with a completely different disposition. I'm excited for what's to come. I'm willing to graciously accept any challenge that teacher education has to offer me. A challenge early on is more to my benefit than a cake walk. Everything happens for a reason. This situation could be my time to shine. I am starting to get more and more excited, but still a dash terrified!

Home again. Home again. Jiggity jig.

I ventured on home to take the Content Area Test this weekend. Ho.ly. Cow. It was for real, man. I tried to briefly study, but to be honest it covered such a wide range of topics that my studying efforts weren't much help. I feel pretty ok about it? I'm not going to stress. La di da.

I had a great great great great day at school yesterday. I was able to spend the entire school day with the fourth graders. I had a complete "aha" moment that made me feel like my "stars are aligned" so to speak. It wasn't anything earth shattering. I was just taking the time out at the end of the day to talk to the students about how they were. At that moment, I could feel excitement swelling inside of me that I am actually going to be a teacher! My job will be teaching kiddos 180 days a year! I canNOT wait to student teach. Being able to be in the classroom at a fairly regular rate better illustrates what my life will be like as a teacher.....COMPLETELY AMAZING!

Here's a cute video to make you smile on this Saturday.

It has been over a month since my last post and it seemed time to sit down and write a few words.

This semester has continued to increase in intensity. I feel as if my sanity is being tested making it through this 21 hour load. I am making it though and with flying colors no less. I am genuinely 100% proud of myself. I have worked my tail off this semester and it's almost over! Thank goodness.

I started practicum in a fourth grade class a couple weeks ago. I am at an elementary school with grades 3-5 about forty five minutes south of school. I manage to fit it into my schedule to go every single day anywhere from 2 to 6 hours.

My last practicum experience was interesting...I'll leave it at that. This practicum experience has been absolutely fabulous though! My teacher is absolutely amazing. She has taught me so much in the short time that I've been in her classroom and we collaborate really well together. The students are equally as amazing. They are all great kids who each have something special to offer the classroom. I haven't had any major problems with classroom management and no major disciplinary issues.

I've been putting myself out there trying to learn and teach whatever my cooperating teacher tosses my way. My first lesson was in math (eek!). I was pretty nervous just because I felt like the math concept I was teaching could potentially be a difficult idea for the students to grasp. The lesson was on frequency and cumulative frequency. I passed out a bag of M & M's and a worksheet with a table consisting of a column with the colors of the M & M's, a column to put tallies for frequency, and a column to calculate cumulative frequency to each student. I also had the worksheet pulled up on the SmartBoard. As a class, we counted the different colors of our M & M's and put them in the appropriate row calculating cumulative frequency all along the way. I graded the papers and the kids really got it. It was the first swell of pride for my student's work.

I had an observed lesson on Monday. I created a really cute Smartboard lesson about linking verbs with a koala theme to it. I made the students remember the linking verbs by clapping and saying them to a beat. Every couple sentence examples we did I would make them repeat it twice. Hopefully it is something they won't forget! Haha.

I gave another lesson today about irregular verbs in the past tense. I used a SmartBoard lesson that my cooperating teacher made with a Chicago theme that was completely adorable. The kids normally get M & M's or animal crackers when they answer questions, but when they asked me what I was going to give them, I told them.... High fives of course! They all thought it was completely dorky, but they got a good laugh out of it. I would call them up to the SmartBoard by pulling their name out of a bowl. Before I would let them go back to their seat, I would give them a high five and tell them awesome job. To be honest, I think it completely embarrassed some of the kids. I told them that I needed smiles from everyone when they came to the front of the room. This made them giggle even more. I can still hear them groaning, "Miss Rooooooooooss."

Next week is my last week with this group of kiddos. I'm enjoying myself so much that I don't want it to end.
The upside? Thanksgiving break the week after!

Has anyone ever head of Ron Clark's Essential 55?
This man Ron Clark started a school in Atlanta that gives scholarships for less advantaged kids. It is unreal how cool this school is. Take a look at this videos and search Ron Clark Academy on youtube if you want more.

Last weekend...

It seems as if I've been up to my eyeballs in school work so I packed up and drove home for the weekend.

It just so happened to be precisely what I needed. A place to get my work done where I knew my family would bugging me so I didn't feel completely alone.
Saturday morning, my parents and I went out for breakfast at a little cafe in my hometown. Completely stuffed from breakfast, we decided to walk around at the little Saturday market across the street. I remember in years past this effort at a small market falling short, but we found some goodies this past weekend. My mom and I finding an adorable porcelain, glazed serving platter and fresh basil for 25 cents a stem! My dad finding an apple cider slushie and bacon.

That productive morning led into a lazy afternoon of taking our dog, Loki, for a long walk on the bike trails by our house. A walk that was made awfully exciting with the sighting of a snake (eek!) and Loki marking her territory so frequently that I feared dehydration for the poor pooch.
While on my walk (not aided with an iPod), I began thinking about the characteristics I most wanted to exhibit as a teacher. I decided during those 105 minutes that as a teacher I want to be creative, consistent/accountable, approachable, well-rounded, and reflective.

The process of thinking of these characteristic led to the thinking of mantras that would best suit these characteristics. They are a work in progress, but I've been pondering them this week on my walks.

Kids just say the darnest thing....

My first semester at Eastern I was required to observe so many hours in the classroom for one of my classes. I observed an art class at an elementary school. This was the greatest part of the class because I got to sit down and observe the animals in the wild.

I was shamelessly eavesdropping on a conversation at a table nearby. I noticed two kids were engaged in a heated conversation. I tuned in to find the source of the conflict. I heard the first hopelessly dorky boy who likely didn't have an athletic bone in his body and combated this by being a know-it-all say to another boy:
"No, I'm sure poison ivy plants have berries. There are poison ivy berries."
The second boy had to stand his ground to this kid so in reply all he had to say was:
"You're wrong. There is no way you're right"
"No, I know this. My cousin, who is a medic, told me that poison ivy has berries."
"Is your cousin a teacher?"
"No."
"Well, then he obviously can't be right."
Hahahahaha.
This is a true story.

Few points of interest?

I'm taking a health studies class that focuses on integrating health education into the classroom. Our instructor is incredible passionate about what she teaches and raises the interest level greatly for me. Each week, students are required to conduct an "energy break" in which they lead the class in some sort of activity to get us up out of our seats. We Tooty Ta'ed on Tuesday. So much fun. Try it!

I was in hysterics over this video. Can you imagine a second grader bustin' a move with Jack the Tooty Ta guy?

In a journal article I reviewed today in the Illinois Reading Council Journal, they had some amazing ideas for conducting effective parent-teacher conferences.
Conferences are one of those topics that produce knots in my stomach. A completely frightening thing in my eyes. This article suggest sending a bulleted summary of topics for the conference (3 topics may be the student's strengths, goals to strive for in the next quarters, and suggestions for parents to help at home). To make this task a bit shorter, the article suggested creating a template with general strengths and goals and putting check marks one by the topics to be covered to send home with the student before conferences. I really liked the ideas in the article. If you want further information on this article let me know.

The beginning of the end...

It's here.
Finally here.
The last year.
The last fall semester.
I've entered my final semester of classes before I begin student teaching.
Holy cow!

As I've begun my Block II classes, I've realized that I have such mixed feelings about student teaching that I, myself, can hardly keep up. Many moments are consumed with exuberant joy. While others...pure terror.

It's a roller coaster. Between worrying about crossing my t's and dotting my i's with pre-placement student teaching tasks and chugging along on class assignments, I often find myself with a glazed look in my eyes trying to feign attention throughout the day.

It is said that reflection is one of the most important things a first year teacher (not to mention student teacher) must do for improvement. I, myself, hope to be the very best teacher that I can absolutely be. How will I reach that point without constant improvement?

I (and Toni) had the idea to to start a blog to express frustrations/worries/joys/etc. and so forth about the process of student teaching and the semester leading up to it.

Just like a grade schooler, I'm giddy to tell whoever will listen all of the fun things I do in my classes. The interesting articles I stumble across. Ideas I have for activities. I don't expect everyone to get excited about these things, but I just feel the need to share.

Thaaaaaat is exactly what this blog is for. Sharing. Venting. Collaborating. Suggesting. Whatever my student teaching heart desires so you in return (my possible 5 viewers. Hi, mom.) can comment your heart's content.

Thanks.