Teaching and Preching

Disclaimer: this will be a long post. Hey, I have two weeks to catch up on! Hmm...where to begin. The past two weeks have been a lot about two things: student teaching and missionary work.

Student teaching: I am totally rocking it. I'm going above and beyond the call of a student teacher...and honestly, above and beyond the call of a regular teacher! Take yesterday for example: school starts at 8:00 A.M. I got to school at 6:00 that morning to grade student work for three hours (1st period is my prep). During my grading for one of my advanced classes I started seeing a pattern of total laziness from my students: incomplete sentences: things like "#coldfront #thunderstorms #lightning..really? That prompted me to do a serious intervention. I put together a powerpoint for my expectations and gave each of my classes a little talking to. I labeled my first slide "Justice" and laid down the law. I gave examples of acceptable and unacceptable work. After that I showed the "Mercy" slide (bringing the principles of Christ into the classroom: oh yeah!). They can always correct their work or do missing assignments and turn them in for full credit. Here was their opportunity to fix the half-effort, sloppy, and lazy work they had submitted for full credit.

I emphasized that if I saw them doing a crappy job and didn't do/say anything, that would mean I didn't care and that I'd given up. This was tough love. This was me showing that I love them and care about them!

I had a video about thunder planned for the day so they could watch and work on their "Doodle 4 Google" submissions or their missing work in class.

The response was amazing. In every class the kids were lining up to talk to me about fixing their work and bringing up their grades. When I'd give them what they needed I'd hear a very emphatic "Thank you Mrs. Rose!"

I had originally planned to get in early that Friday morning to finish the grading and then work on my student teaching portfolio while the students watched the video. I didn't get home until 4:30 that afternoon but it was a day spent laboring in love with my students. One day when those kids have crappy teachers who don't care, they will remember Mrs. Rose!

In other good news: I am most likely going to be running open gym for girls basketball for the next 7 weeks that I'm here...I'm so excited!

Shirt says "Schofield Basketball"...and we got chocolate pie for Pi Day!

Sap story over: student teaching has been awesome. My administrators came and observed me and liked what they saw. I'm half-way through it and it feels like a total breeze. That was bound to happen after a 19 credit semester with a part-time job! 10 credits, no job, and I feel like I'm on vacation. This leave lots of time for us to do missionary work!

Last Saturday we fed the sister missionaries taco salad and I went to do visits with them that evening for an hour and a half. I know the missionaries are protected and all, but I am so happy I know self-defense! Walking around at night in parking lots as we move from duplex to duplex...not my favorite thing. But finding people to talk to and share a message about Christ?.... my new favorite thing! I've been doing visits with them once a week or more and it's so fun. There's nothing that will strengthen your testimony more than to bear testimony to someone on a specific topic you feel prompted to share. And I'm overcoming the Beal Curse: I haven't cried once. Wednesday I had the opportunity to do a 'member present lesson' with the sisters to a lady in our apartment complex and I plan to take her to the "Birthday Dinner" activity with me this next Thursday (p.s. this 'Birthday Dinner' happens to be on my birthday...coincidence? We shall see). We could tell she felt the spirit, and at the end when we invited her to pray for the closing prayer she started to cry...so sweet! She is going to have FHE at our house this coming Monday with the missionaries. I love having the chance to go out with the sisters and bear testimony to people for a few hours a week.

This last week I taught about the different storms: thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. I built my tornado box and we 'built a tornado' in each of my classes that day. The kids loved it! For hurricanes we evaluated the similarities and differences between hurricane Katrina and typhoon Haiyan. If the kids don't think I'm awesome, at least I think I am. ;)

I've been compiling my student teacher portfolio for the past week. Yuck. It is extremely tedious. I'm almost done with it though. On the 26th we have to show our portfolio to representatives from BYUI that come down to evaluate us and interview us. It's during this time that they decide if you're going to be a teacher or not. I'm confident I'll be just fine.

Yesterday Justin and I went to a St. Patrick's Day event put on by the city of Henderson. They had a huge parade and carnival. We watched the parade in the morning. The place was packed so we just walked along the sidewalk the whole time. Justin noticed a family walking with their little kids and then he noticed that the family had stopped but one of the sons hadn't: good thing Justin was paying attention! He stopped me and said the boy was lost so I crouched down and asked him his name and we helped him find his mom and dad...talk about a scary situation! When we found the parents they hadn't even noticed their son was missing...well they're lucky someone was paying attention.

Storm Troopers! They had a really good Boba Fett too. 

And a wookie...ha!

We played an extreme game of ticket to ride: we each had two sets of trains. Our final scores were in the two-and-three hundreds!

As for Justin his update is, "Work's going good." He has his 90 days visit with his boss next week. We look forward to that. I turn 22 next week! Woo...that's all for this week.