thewanderingknitter

I had my first observation as a student teacher today, and I was a little more nervous than I should have been.  I mean, I’ve taught before and I knew exactly what I was going to be presenting to the kids- but the thought of someone taking notes while I was doing a lesson and then going over it blow-by-blow with me made me a tad nervous.  In the end, I got a great review (even though the kids were not acting so great, but that’s half the fun of kindergarten!) and I have my first observation under my belt! 

I forgot how exhausting teaching can be!  I previously taught first grade (at a weird scientology school, it was a bad experiece) but it was a whole different ball game with kids who had been in school before and knew the basic routine.  Kindergarten is amazingly fun, but I am so beat at the end of the day!  I know that in a few weeks the kids will have the whole routine down cold, but I feel like I did nothing but repeat myself all day and take trips to the nurses office!

First day at school today!  I was extremely nervous, but really had no reason to be.  I got paired with an awesome master teacher and we get along really well.  She has a similar teaching style to my own so I felt really comfortable in the classroom.  Part of my hopes that my next assignment will be with something who has a completely different teaching style just so I can experience a different way of doing things.  It was amazing to be able to walk to work today, and only working 8 hours was an absolute dream!

Last day of nannying was full of emotions- but one of the main emotions was surprise.  The mom had one of my replacement candidates come to spend the morning with us, which I was all for and really excited about.  The mom told me that she got a weird vibe from this lady, but maybe she was just being too senstive.  The second the mom walks out the door the lady starts asking me questions about the pay (really innappropriate questions that you are not supposed to ask people).  And then she asks me where the family hides the spare key and which doors are usually locked when we leave the house.  I was surprised she didn’t ask me to point out where all the valuables were kept!  Then her weird mandal-wearing husband showed up out of the blue.  At that moment I told her that it was great meeting her and we had to be on our way to an appointment, she wanted to know if she could stay in the house with her husband and wait for us.  Bizzarre!  Needless to say, I showed them out, locked all the doors and set the alarm.

I love my car, it’s eleven years old but runs like a champ.  I discovered today that there is a HUUUUGE dent in one door and some paint chipped off.  I’m not really super upset about the dent, it’s amazing that I’ve gone eleven years without a single dent or ding.  But I am upset that no one left a note.  It’s a really noticable dent, if you opened your car door onto mine you would have felt it.  I don’t even want a note saying who did or their contact info- just a note saying “sorry!” would have been enough for me.  When did we lose good manners in this society?

Finally found out where I will be teaching and the school is literally just a few blocks away from my home.  No more hour commute each way!  It sounds like I’ll be spending the first half of my student teaching in a kindergarten class, which I think will be a really great experience.  I will get to see how the first day of school is run for kids who have never really experienced school.  I’m sure this will be an amazing learning experience and I can’t wait to get started!  I am a little annoyed because they could not tell me who my master teacher is or even when the school day starts or ends.  It looks like I’ll be doing a little research work on my own to get it all figured out!

I only had to work eight hours today, which was pretty darn awesome.  I work ten hours per day on average, but today the mom came home early to interview new nanny’s so I got to go home at nap time!  It was a little awkward meeting people who may be caring for this little boy that I spent so much time with, I just hope the mom picks someone who can handle him. 

I realized today that working eight hours makes me really incredibly happy.  I had time to actually make dinner, do some homework and chill out a little bit.  I think I’ll be doing some knitting tonight- M has a sock monkey that he has had since he was born, and it’s looking a bit shabby.  As a joke he asked me to knit it some clothes, I’m already done with the pajama pants and am working on a jaunty smoking jacket.  Pictures to come!

I spent the weekend with M and his coworkers at a sort of team building event that they do every year.  Nice, nice people but I’ve never been one for team building events.  That was one reason that I left my nice cushy corporate job.  The first day we played lawn games, which is always good times.  Most people brought their kids and let them wander around during the lawn games.  Seeing a toddler wander around the horseshoe stakes made me a little nervous.  Horse shoes are pretty heavy, it was my first time playing and I sucked pretty hard.  We also played bocci ball and a quaint little game called cornhole.  Which immediately made me think of the cornballer on arrested development.  The game was not nearly as dramatic as a cornballer, you pitch bean bags towards a hole in a board.  Not sure where the corn comes in.  When it was my turn to throw my bean bag, one toddler was standing in front of the hole- her mother basically told me to bean her daughter in the face with a bean bag because maybe she would learn to move away.  Not sure if that is awesome parenting or questionable parenting.  I did not smack the small child in the face, and my team did not acheive cornhole glory.  Which I’m kind of ok with.

So I’m currently taking my last class for school (not really, I’ll have four more for my master’s, but I’ll be taking those really slowly over time) and I can say that I am burnt out!  It seems like this class has the same prompts and topics as a few of my other classes.  I’m finding it really challenging to think up new and exciting ideas for paper that I have essentially already written.  Just a few more weeks and I’m done with this class and I won’t have to worry about papers anymore- instead it will turn into endless lesson plans.  But at least I’m interested in lesson planning, I’m so curious to see what grade I get assigned so I can start looking at the state standards!  That statement probably does make me sound like a complete dork, but I’m o.k. with it.

When I’m out of school, I may even have free time in the evenings- that is a very exciting thought.

I can not even express in words how much I hate “the truth” anti-smoking commercials, is there really anyone out there that has not heard that smoking isn’t so great for you?  Not only are the commercials extremely heavy handed and ridiculously dramatic, they also make me cringe just a bit.  However, the lastest one does feature two actors who should consider trying out for Cats - check out their jazz hands!  But really, whenever I see one of those ads it just makes me sad.  Both my parents are very heavy smokers (if someone was to release a soundtrack of my childhood, many tracks would feature the sound of lighters) these ads make me think of  my parents mortality.  The fact that they will probably never get a chance to meet their grandchildren (unless I get going on that pretty soon) just makes me sad.  Smoking is just something that they are not willing to give up, no matter how many conversations I have with them.  In a way, I think these ads make me think of myself as a failure- I was not able to help my parents in any way and due to that, their lives are going to be cut short.