Puke and Fruit

Student teaching has been surprisingly good so far. I have learned a lot and each day I get more responsibility and gain more confidence as a teacher. I have also had some interesting "first" experiences. I have been flipped off, had a student throw up on the gym floor, had police come to interrogate a girl for stealing items out of the locker room, had a girl fart in class (very audibly), and had a wonderful student bring me an apple. Isn't that cute?

I know there will be many more instances similar to these if I continue to stay in education so I should get used to it. But there is one "first" that I hope to prolong as much as possible…parent-teacher conflict! All in all, I am starting to feel like a real teacher now and will catch myself actually having fun every once in a while.

Darn you Fifteens

For those of you with weak stomachs, I apologize…actually not really, I'm giggling a little bit. Here is Dad's hernia. It was on his lower right side. This is an image of his intestines protruding through his abdominal wall. The surgeon went in laparoscopically, made a few little holes, did some rearranging, and stitched him back up. Dad was being too macho to take the strong pain relievers they gave him and only took the weak stuff. He's been up and moving around, he even tried to help Mom shovel snow on Saturday before mom slapped him a big "NO" on that one. You know how hard it is for Dad to sit still, so he did the only other thing Dad does best: watch movies. We spent Friday night and Saturday enjoying a Lord of the Rings extended version marathon in the new theatre seats. He has since developed a bad cold and has stayed home from work. But he is recovering from the surgery well, as we are all glad to hear.

My First Week

I started student teaching this week. Well, I started going to Oak Canyon everyday. I had some orientation to do but I've mostly just been observing and doing little grading assignments or equipment stuff. I got my very own set of keys to the teacher's lounge, the gym, the locker rooms, and our office. Our (yes, I am allowed to say "our") class did Dance Dance Revolution my first day (have you ever considered doing DDR in a PE class? Cool, huh!) But it's the last week of the term so we have to clean out lockers the rest of the week and then re-assign them next week. Which means there will be about two weeks where I won't get to teach. Last week that would have been fine with me, I wanted to put it off as long as possible, but I am getting antsy. I have decided I don't think I mind the teaching, I just hate the lesson planning. If I could just teach someone else's lesson, that would be sa-weet because then if it's a boring lesson or something I could just blame someone else.

Anyway, the school is amazing. All of the faculty I have met have been very nice and helpful. The whole environment of the school is so cooperative, everyone seems to have each other's back. I am still super uncomfortable calling all of them by their first names, especially the principal. I'm just not ready for that.

They also have this cool program called "eTime" (E for Eagles, the school mascot). Tuesday-Friday there is a short 25 minute period where students with a "D" or "F" in any subject go to their teacher to make up work and everyone else basically gets fun time. They can play basketball in our gym, go watch movies in the auditorium, read in the library (this is actually one of the most popular places to be, isn't that great?), do art projects, all kinds of fun stuff. The principal says they've decreased "F" students down to 1% by using this program. Sounds good to me.

There are 4 periods of 75 minutes each day, 25 minute eTime, and a 30 minute lunch. Except we have 1st period prep every other day, which is nice. and on Monday there is no eTime, classes are a little bit shorter, and the kids get out an hour early. That's when we'll have our department meetings.

Despite the fact that I have done zero teaching and I have basically just stood or walked around the gym, I am absolutely exhausted! I really miss my daily 3 PM nap. I get up at 5:30AM and leave school around 3PM and I could seriously just crash for the night right then. I'm pathetic. I am worried about having to teach physical activity all day, I may pass out. We will team-teach volleyball to the girls, which I can fake my way through but then I have to teach basketball all by myself and plan the unit out…dun dun dun…I am HORRIBLE at basketball. My professors told me I should take a basketball class to build my confidence, which I did. Then this week I've been watching the girls play during eTime and holy moly, they are GOOD! So, yikes-a-bee. Then after basketball I might have to do Ultimate Frisbee. And as someone who is proud of the fact that she had never played "Ultimate" until forced to in class, this is not a good sport either. Also while playing frisbee at BYU, my professor asked, "you haven't done this much before, have you?" When I replied, "no," she said, "I could tell."(Ouch).

So I have my work cut out for me but I am very excited! I think I got the perfect school placement and I'm looking forward to a fun semester!

(Sorry there are no fun pictures to look at and it's mostly just reading. I know it's boring but I thought I would just give you an update.)

Look out Apollo!!!!

Jaden and I went ice skating last night and you have got to see this kid! He is amazing on a pair of ice skates!!! I helped put them on and the he just took off walking around on them by himself. I thought he would need help getting used to walking with them--false. He showed off by walking forwards, backwards, sideways, and with his eyes closed!

We went to the Olympic Oval which is a speed skating track, not your typical skating rink. The oval is huge, about the size of a running track. We went around the whole track 5 times!!! Each time we went around Jaden just got better and better. The first time he held onto my hand and the wall. We basically just walked around on the ice with little stutter steps.We went pretty slowly but Jaden taught himself how to stop using the toe pick and stopped himself from falling quite a few times...but we did fall...a lot. Jaden was such a good sport, he just said, "I'm okay!" and got back up and kept going. After the first time around, which took about 30 minutes, we had to take a break because the zamboni had to clean the ice, which took FOREVER. Seriously, 23 minutes to clean the ice. We were getting antsy.

When we got back on again, Jaden started getting more brave and picked up speed. We went around in less time with fewer falls with every lap. Then he started actually gliding a little bit on the ice, closing his eyes, taking little jumps, weaving his feet in and out a little, and then...he let go of the wall...and then me! He started doing it all by himself. Then when he would fall, he would say, "It's okay to fall because that's how we learn." On the last time around he only fell 2 times! That is incredible because the track is ginormous and it was only his first time! Way to go Jaden! We had so much fun! He did say that he wished his family was there so that they could see how good he was. So here are some videos of him skating. Sorry they aren't very good, I'm not the most coordinated skater/photographer.

Movin on Up

I'm done!!! I took my last undergraduate final yesterday!!!

Also, I thought I'd show everyone what Nathan's stocking looks like. Mom is so good!

And if you notice the new location, it is due to the increase in population of the family. And look how far up the stairs I am!

In other news: I am now unemployed! Hooray!!! :o)

You mean there's a right answer???

Granite School District came to BYU to interview secondary education majors graduating by next August today. I received a call a few weeks ago telling me to sign up for an interview and since I didn't think they would call every single education major, I was feeling special and signed up. I'm still not positive if I want to try and teach first and pursue a Master's Degree or just go to school first. I figure it depends on if I can get hired or not, so I prepared for the interview anyway.

I got up at 6:30 this morning so that I could actually do my hair. No joke, this is the first time I have ever blowdryed, curled, and styled my hair since I've been at BYU. Then as I got into my car I noticed a gigantic run up my nylons so I had to go back and change them. My interview was at 9:00 but I was supposed to be there 20 minutes early to fill out paperwork. I realized at 8:00 that the resume I sent the district had a typo on it (how EMBARRASSING!) so I printed out a new one to hand into them, hoping they hadn't looked at the one I submitted online yet. I also discovered that my professor still hadn't given me the letter of recommendation I asked him to write on Monday, so I only had 1, instead of the 2 to 3 the district asked for. :-(

Anyway, I got there at 8:30 and started filling out the paperwork and tried to calm myself down because I felt like a lot of things were not going my way. I told myself I had 30 minutes to relax, spit out my gum (I wanted to have spearminty fresh breath), think of awe-inspiring reamarks to say in my head, and reapply chapstick. Five minutes later the guy called my name and I just stared at him like, "Uh...yes..." while thinking, "I'm not ready yet!"

So I go into this teeny tiny coat closet and sit down and there was no room to put all my stuff so I just sat there and held it, I had to swallow my gum like a teenager going to talk to a teacher trying to not get 5 demerits, and my lips suddenly felt dry and pasty. Then he pulled out my resume with the typo on it and I cringed. Then he said, "So you want to be a PE teacher. I saw on your resume something about soccer." I thought he was referring to my coaching internship so I started to explain it but then he said, "Did you see that BYU game with the girl?" (he started making hair-pulling gestures) I explained to him my familiarity with the situation.

The man says the HR person who scheduled the interviews got sick so he was filling in and didn't really know much and couldn't answer any of my questions, which was a little frustrating. Then we got down to business and asked:

1. What are the most important things to do during the first few days of the school year?

2. How important is it to work together with coworkers and how would you do it? (Seriously??)

3. What are the best teaching methods you would use...or something like that...I turned my answer into that question regardless of what the actual question was.

4. What kind of relationship do you want to have with students?

and the big one...

5. What is unique to you as a teacher? How will that help you to teach?

I felt like my answers were well articulated, I don't think there's anything I wish I would have remembered to say or said something else instead. But because my interview was so far ahead of schedule I had to sit outside the interviewing closets and finish my paperwork while the 2 interviewers talked and waited for the next interviewees. I overheard the man who interviewed me asking the other interviewer (a woman who actually knew what she was doing) about the questions and she said, "I have not been impressed with the responses I've been given so far. Nobody has gotten any of them completely right." I stopped writing and thought, "What?! You mean there are actually right and wrong answers? I thought they just wanted our opinions and were trying to get to know our teaching philosophies and stuff." She continued to explain that we get certain points for certain answers and then there's an overall score at the end...I had no idea. It felt like we were just shooting the breeze public school teaching style. Then I started to feel really dumb and juvenile. She said that the 1st question about the 1st few days of school no one had gotten right. She said everyone says that setting up procedures and routines is what is most important, (which is what I said and I was pretty proud of my answer) but the RIGHT answer is to learn everyone's names. What??? As a secondary level teacher with 150 students you think learning everyone's names is more beneficial than keeping everything under control until I can get a chance to learn everyone's names?! Fine. I missed those 3 points completely.

In conclusion, I don't think it went that well. But I'm okay with that. This interview is just the first of many and it was good practice experience...I guess. Schools don't even start posting job openings until April 1st so then we'll all have to re-interview or something anyway. I just thought I would let you all know. Have a good weekend! Only 3 more weeks until Christmas!

The Next Big Step

I got my student teaching assignment today. I'll be at Oak Canyon Junior High in Lindon, UT. I googled it and it says it should be an 11 minute drive from my apartment...excluding traffic...and snow...I don't know much yet except I'll be at that school the entire semester. They usually try to get us at a junior high for one half and a high school for one half, but I guess not for me.