Monday I taught in my health teaching methods class. That class is a joke. There are five of us in the class. We've signed up to teach our classmates different subjects in Health Ed throughout the semester. I usually don't plan anything until the morning of because it's a huge waste of time. When we're the ones being taught, we're supposed to "act like we're in middle school." Yeah, because I remember what that's like.
Tuesday I observed the astronomy class I'll be teaching that class this Tuesday. High school classes are an hour and ten minutes, so I need to prepare something to teach for 70 minutes! I don't even know what I'll be teaching yet. Great! I saw Travis though and that was fun. He's just across the hall from where I'll be teaching.
Tuesday was also Justin's birthday. He's a mighty 25 years old! I got him some cologne for his birthday gift. We celebrated on Saturday because my Tuesdays are crazy (class from 7:45-7:30), but I did get up extra early to make breakfast: French toast with Nutella, strawberries, and whipped cream! Not only that but they were stacked on top of each other like this:
Thank you Pinterest for all your amazing ideas!
Tuesday night we went out to dinner with some friends, and James (Justin's brother) made him a cookie monster cupcake-cake (shaped like a cupcake, big enough to be a cake). Keaton came over and we all had some. Thanks James!
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| Happy Birthday to my handsome man! |
Day one I taught the three rock types. I did what is called a "jigsaw" where students read about one thing and then they share with their classmates what they learned in groups. It worked well with igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. I had them do several literacy strategies along with the rock content. It's good practice for me when I teach to Common Core Standards. After that we learned the differences and similarities between rocks and minerals and that was about it for day one. The kids were really cooperative which I expected on the first day. As the days progressed they began to test me more (which I also expected) but I did pretty dang well considering this was my first time on my own with 32 12-year-olds examining my every move. A few hours later I taught again in health teaching methods. So much teaching!
Thursday I not only taught in the earth science class, I taught my SPED 360 class about mental retardation. That was at 7:45. I taught for 25 minutes and then walked down the hall to teach the earth science class. I was so stressed I wanted to die. I stayed up until midnight the night before finishing my lesson planS for the next day and I was at my wits end. I did another jigsaw with how each rock forms, where they form, and each rock's subcategory. They learned about intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks, clastic and chemical sedimentary rocks, and foliated and nonfoliated metamorphic rocks. It was fun for me because I have a ton of rock samples from my geology field trips so I brought my rocks from home for examples and the kids really liked that. At the end we did a kind of "quiz" where I put up pictures I've taken on field trips and they answered if it was igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic rock and they had to tell me how they knew.
At this point I was stressed beyond my capacity. After I teach I always meet with my teacher (who is recording me in the back) to talk about how it went. Both days went fine, but with everything else going on beyond teaching I was burned out. I just started crying. My teacher (Brother Benitez) was like, "So, what's going on why are you crying?" and I said, "I don't know!" He was funny. He said, "Ok, you just need to cry, that's great." When I had finally relaxed the girl who was recording me said I did really well and she couldn't think of a thing I could have done better. That made me feel better but I was just exhausted, hence the tears. When I got home I cried some more and Justin thought it was because the lesson went bad, but when I told him it actually went really well he laughed at me. =] I went to my least-favorite-good-for-nothing-really-stupid-I-have-to-take-this mineralogy class and failed my quiz and my lab. It didn't even phase me. I had so many assignments due Wednesday night that I didn't get to because of all my teaching preparation so I had many "0%" showing up on i-learn. I've never just not done an assignment. It was a crazy thing!
Friday could not come soon enough. I was actually really excited to teach the junior high class that day because we learned the rock cycle and the students created their own rock cycles. They had to have each rock type, it's subcategory, the pressures involved in forming that rock, and it had to be labeled and have pictures that showed me the differences between all three rocks and their subcategories. The kids rocked it! After that I gave them sticky notes and they labeled each other's posters with things like "rock type" and "forces" and "subcategory rock." They also wrote things like "missing force" or "missing subcategory" if the group failed to include specific criteria on their posters. It was great! While they made posters I played a rock song I found on youtube. Shae actually gave me the idea for the song. Pretty soon I had them singing, "It started with erosion!!!" and it was a lot of fun.
Other than all the good that happened, I had my first discipline experience. One student was being extremely inappropriate and mean to another student and I cracked down on him. I absolutely hate bullies and I told him I do not tolerate it in my classroom. I think he felt like he could do it because he was testing my limits to see how far he could go. Not far my friend! I made him sit in the back and wouldn't let him participate with the poster activity. I felt bad but it was his choice: "You may choose to participate or you may choose to continue to misbehave in which case you'll sit in the back and I'll ask you not to participate." Teaching with love and logic people!
The teacher of the class, Mr. Storm, was awesome. He was really gracious for letting me take his class for three days, and by the end he said I did very well. He mentioned that he left the classroom (which I had noticed but I didn't think anything of it) because he felt like he didn't need to listen to know what he needed to go back and reteach. That was very encouraging, and my teachers said the same thing. They emphasized that that was a big deal that he felt like he could leave, and overall I did great. It was such a hard week but I learned a lot and this experience has really prepared me for what student teaching will actually be like. Except student teaching will be WAY BETTER because I'll be teaching and THAT'S IT! No additional homework from other stupid classes! Huzzah! I'm so glad I'm done teaching junior high kids the rest of the semester!
Friday night Justin's team played and they barely lost. They played with 6 players and no subs while the other team played with 7 players and like, 4 subs. One of Justin's players wasn't even playing really; he had a cut finger so he couldn't catch or throw or play defense, but it was better to play 6 on 7 than 5 on 7 so...yeah.
After his game Keaton and I went to Ender's Game together. We loved it! I read the book two years ago so I forgot the details which allowed me to enjoy the movie a lot. Keaton got candy and I got popcorn and we shared. It was fun. Thanks Keaton!
Saturday I did some tutoring in the morning, then studied for my mineral I.D. retake test for this Tuesday. This class is a total joke. NOT ONE PERSON got a 90% or better on that test the first time so everyone has to re-take it. She handed everyone's tests back and said, "Don't share your answers with anyone." Yeah right. As soon as she left the room EVERYONE started asking, "What did you get one 18? What did you get on 24?" and so on. I was thinking, "hang on, didn't she just say...?" One of my classmates asked me where my test way -- of course you want to know where MY test is -- I came really close to passing compared to everyone else so of course they want to get answers from me. I lied and said I didn't have it and left. Too much temptation! Honestly, I don't blame my classmates for cheating! The stakes are too high in that class! And they have to worry about their grades for applying to grad school. I told my supervisor at work about it and she said a teacher should never put his/her students in a position to cheat and that's exactly what my teacher did. She ended up finding out about people exchanging answers so she's creating a new test for us to re-take.
Saturday night we watched the men's championship soccer game. Somehow that made us decide we wanted to watch a hockey game when we go to Seattle for Thanksgiving. We're excited!
This weekend was our stake conference. We talked about hastening the work. Justin and I have been doing a lot of indexing. I have a goal to do 1,000 names before December. It is so not hard and our ward has a goal to do 14,000 so we're taking part in that goal as well. Tonight we had friends over for 'breakfast for dinner' and then played games.
Well that was a long rant. Other than all that, we put our Christmas lights up in our family room. We really love our apartment and we'll be sad to leave it next year. Everyone pray that Justin can find a job in Las Vegas! We can use all the help we can get.
I can't believe how much classroom experience you've had before student teaching. I didn't have any practice teaching in a real classroom before student teaching. We had to teach lessons to each other in my health methods class and I had to go and sit in a summer school class one summer but I did nothing and the teacher did nothing. I think student teaching will probably be easier for you because of that for sure.
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