Sometimes I Wish I Tweeted

I think I would have a funny twitter feed; however, since I'm morally opposed to new technologies (that's code for "too lazy" and "can't remember my username/password to my twitter account because I had to set one up for my 'technology in the classroom' class." Plus I don't actually know how to tweet) I am just going to pretend I have a twitter account and make a list on my blog. As of late I also cannot mentally handle anything bigger than a list.

So here are my student-teacher tweets:

Life makes you a better teacher. Perhaps I have not lived enough. Time to change that.

1st hour someone wants to be an event planner. Made me think of J-Lo. And her booty.

Wednesday: I accidentally fell in love with my students. Especially 5th hour.

Thursday: I died. Cause of death? Student Presentations. Shot in the heart over a thousand times with "likes," "ums," and "yeahs."

Me: "Hey I bought Cliff Bars this week."
Cooperative Teacher: "As your mentor, I have succeeded. My job is done."
(My cooperative teacher believes that the breakfast of champions includes a Cliff Bar and a Paradise Mango Pepsi. Next week I plan on bringing Pepsi to guarantee an excellent recommendation from him to future employers. Hopefully he'll say I'm a champion)

Man I love chapstick.

Welcome Fall Weather.

Thank you Danny Kaye, for reminding me that life could not better be. And making me giggle relentlessly for two hours.

Speaking of giggling. 6th hour practically in tears from crying. Thank you Wall-E.

Empty. Just Like My Gas Tank

Recently I feel like I have been running low on things much faster than I usually would. The first and most expensive being gas. Instead of filling up whenever I go home (which was like once a month), I now find myself purchasing a tank of gas a week. I've also been running low on groceries and find myself at the store at least three times a week. To go along with this I think I'm always starving, but I'm fairly certain I'm gaining weight. Lovely. So I've compiled a list of things I am running low on.

Gas

Food

Patience. I feel bad for 6th hour, because by that point I just want to yell at them. Really it's no their fault at all.

Energy. Along with patience I am lacking energy. 5th hour probably suffers the most from this because it's right after lunch. Those kids get a nearly comatose teacher.

Sleep. Even though I have now started going to be earlier and earlier, I am still perpetually tired. I went to bed around 9:15 last night (Saturday night in case you were wondering) and didn't even feel bad about it; although, I might have felt like a little bit of a loser.

Food goes on here twice

Toothpaste. Maybe I'm brushing my teeth more because I am acutely aware of how often I am speaking to people.

Voice. I'm running low on voice cause talking all the time does that. I don't expect it will last through the rest of the week. Talking non-stop is not my favorite thing to do.

Socks. I don't have enough of the little hide-y socks to wear with dress shoes.

Social life. Don't get me wrong, I didn't have much of this to begin with. I am happy that my roommate is content to watch a movie with me while I grade mounds of papers and she does homework. Thanks Brooke, I'm glad we can be friends when I'm actually awake and we're in the same room.

Emotional capacity. I think this is running low because I am being pulled so many different directions within the day. Each student loves when I stop and give them my undivided attention. However, this becomes and impossibility when you times that by 35 students per class, and four classes a day. By the end of the day I feel stretched thin and emotionally this is a hard thing I think.

I think that's all that I thought of to put on this list. Now to complete my lesson plan for tomorrow. Yes I am only one day ahead of my students. Hopefully they don't realize this...

Things I've learned from Student Teaching: A Series of Comments

So the first week of actually being in front of my classes went well. On Tuesday I attended a seminar class that will count for two credits this semester. From what I gather it's mostly a support group for student teaching. At the end the teacher shared some sound advice. She told us to write this phrase on our mirror so we could see it daily: "Just keep telling yourself that you will pass student teaching and you will probably get a job. So relax." This sounds great, right? It should be reassuring, however, my scumbag brain decided to follow that statement with this from The Hunger Games: "Embrace the probability of your imminent death, and know in your heart that there's nothing I can do to save you." Thanks Haymitch for turning an inspirational quote into feelings of imminent death.

I will say that even though after my first day I really did feel like I was going to die (mostly because I was just completely physically drained) I have enjoyed my classes. Some of these kids really do just want you to get to know them, and once you do that they will try their hardest to learn from you. So far I think it's great. It really is true though, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

On Student Teaching

I just finished reading over a hundred ninth grade introductory essays and at the end I couldn't help but think, what was the point? Then I was reading over old blog posts and found this: "... at the end of all those 'ands' and 'buts' there's a piece of hidden treasure where the child tells us something that we never knew about him up to now. And good teachers use that piece of hidden treasure as a key to unlock motivation and to bring the child back into the classroom work..." -Jonathan Kozol.

Yeah, I still want to be a teacher. Even though it took me over five hours to read all of these student's papers, and by the end my eyes were ready to fall out of my head it was worth it. I want these students to become whatever it is they want to become, because I think they really can become whatever they want to become. And really that's all I've thought about so far. That's mostly because I have only observed so far in this class. Tuesday's the day I actually get up in front of them. For an hour. Four different times. Please bless that they don't tear me apart.

Dear Professional Teaching Portfolio,

I no longer care how these ten artifacts have "helped me to become a better teacher." I also don't think that I care that I have done a billion lesson plans, and now my reward is to reflect on how they help students and bla bla bla. Mostly I'm just sick of reflecting on artifacts. I've also heard that very few schools who are looking to hire you actually look at this portfolio. Needless to say my motivation to finish this is rapidly declining.

Sincerely,

I'd rather be outside

Distracted

So this is the second time that I have sat down to do homework today. I have a annotated bibliography of thirty texts due in a week, as well as a book talk to go along with that. Not to mention my professional teaching portfolio and probably two or three other things that I am forgetting. But the minute I sit to a computer, what do I do?

I listen to this song a billion times...

It's a great song. I hope that you see right through my walls.

I've also been on a Dr. Pepper kick. I'm not sure what it is about the last few weeks of school, but ever since my second semester I crave Dr. Pepper the last month of school. Maybe so I can stay awake? I don't think it's been working this semester. I've just increased my intake of sugar by like a billion. You know how some foods advertise on the label something like "Good Source of Calcium"? I think Dr. Pepper should say "Good Source of Calories. And nothing else."

I've also been doing this cool thing where I will get halfway through one thing and then suddenly have the overwhelming urge to start something else. So I have all of my homework started, but I have little to no faith in my ability to follow through on them.

In other news, my roommate and I really want to go to California for a kind of senior trip. Disneyland is calling my name.

Anyway, I'm off to start something else without actually finishing it. Woot woot.

Careful What You Wish For....

Remember that one time that I was actually planning and hoping to work two jobs, take classes during the summer and still find time to breath? Yeah me too. I dunno what I was thinking, because that's exactly what I got for this summer, and it may kill me.

Keeping Perspective

So the last week or so has been really hard for me to focus. I have had an extremely hard time writing or studying. And by writing I mostly mean typing in and of itself. I feel like I shouldn't edit this post just so you can get an idea as to how bad my typing abilities have become; however, I won't do that to you. It would be very hard to read and probably not very entertaining for anyone either.

In effort to keep in perspective why I actually want to get good grades and graduate, I bought a book entitled "Letters to a Young Teacher" (I might have also bought it because Boarders went out of business and I got it for like $1.50). Anyway, I have started to read it as 1), an escape from homework, and 2) as a way to remember that I really do want to teach. I have yet to finish this book, but about a hundred pages in and I'm hooked. I love the way Jonathan Kozol brings teaching to most personal level that it possibly could be. He loves the aspects of teaching where the teacher actually learns something of the student, and therefore can help the student better understand the task at hand. Learning and teaching for that matter isn't just a manufactured process to make certain that students make it to the next level and then become successful. Teacher and learning is about relationships, and then building on those to create understanding. I could literally gush about this book for a very long time; however, I won't bore those of you who are not planning on becoming teachers, but I will give you a few snippets that I have found and loved. Most of these probably only make sense in context... but I still liked them a lot!

"That bond of trust and tenderness comes first. Without that, everything is merely dutiful- and generally, deadening. It is not for dutiful aridity that people who love children become teachers."

"... at the end of all those 'ands' and 'buts' there's a piece of hidden treasure where the child tells us something that we never knew about him up to now. And good teachers use that piece of hidden treasure as a key to unlock motivation and to bring the child back into the classroom work..."

"Words like these [proficient, humorous, interesting, colorful] do not teach literacy skills; they teach pomposity... Don't inflict dead verbiage on living children."

There are several more that I have underlined (and yes, I have been underlining things in this book) but those are the ones that I will share for now.

The Closer it Gets to Finals...

The more I find myself on facebook, blogger, or any other non-school related website.

Also, it is that lovely time of year: Registration. I think I've said quite a bit on this subject; however, there's more to be said. I hate it. FOREVER.

In addition, I'm wishing this would happen instead of the current situation of just rain:

I also wish that teachers would only have this stamp:

Wednesday

I like the feeling of getting things done. This is usually only one sparkling moment within a week that I actually feel this in regard to school work, but it's still good all the same. As a random side note, these moments happen on Wednesdays a lot. Maybe Wednesday is my day or something, but I feel like it's the day I get the most done.

That's all I really had to say. I hope your Wednesday is successful as well :)

Monday

School Lunch

Today I thought about high school lunch. I miss that. The social aspect, all my friends together, laughing and having a good time. Oh and having more than 15 minutes to down my entire lunch, when I actually remember to bring it to campus.

Today

has been a very long, but very successful day. We're going to talk about it in a list :)

1. Ballet. Turns out I haven't forgotten everything and I only look retarded doing some stuff rather than all of it. Also, I was missing it for a reason. I have been awake and attentive in all of my classes, starting long days with ballet was a good idea. Point for me.

2. I sat by the right person today in my Climate Change Lab. The student aid handed us a sheet of equations and numbers to plug in as a "refresher," this is where I would have started crying however my professor then proceeded to say we could work in groups. The girl sitting next to me actually knew what was going on and with our collective knowledge we got through the whole worksheet! Even though neither of us really knew how to work Excel or Math we made it.

3. English classes are basically second nature and I am no longer intimidated by them even if the professor has a reputation that precedes him or her (bring it on British Literature). I was intimidated the first day, but no longer :)

4. Sleep. How I need thee. New rule that I learned from my body this week. It is fairly vital that I get to bed by 10:30 at least 4 nights a week. Yes, I am an old lady (another way to prove this is that I get heartburn... what 20 year old gets heart burn? Oh yeah, me.)

5. Pretty much trying to get a rhythm down. So far it's going ok I think. I need to go shopping (in case you were wondering) and I am excited for school. First week, take that!

New Buses?

Yeah, I thought about this title long and hard. This is what I came up with. I think Cache Valley Transit has invested in new buses and that plus pancakes and eggs for breakfast was the perfect start to the first day of school. So far I've only been to one class, and sadly enough I have to drop said class, but it feels good to be back in school. I know how you, my dear reader, know how much I love school, so I'm pretty happy.

Other happenings? I am no longer the only person in my apartment. My roommates that I knew returned, and we finally met the newest member of our apartmenthold (it's like household, but in an apartment). I also think I am slightly overwhelmed by the amount of people that live around me. I think I have completely forgotten the socialness of Bridgerland and I also think it's going to take me a minute to get used to it. At Oak Meadows the most people we had in our apartment at one time was when my roommate's family came up for dinner one time, yesterday I spent three or so hours in an apartment half the size with twice as many people in them. Also, I didn't know any of my neighbors at Oak Meadows and at Bridgerland I am being inundated with neighbors... they just keep popping up! Not that I don't like it, it's just different. I think I developed claustrophobia during my Oak Meadows days and I think I am going to have to overcome it very very quickly.

In other news I'm just as awkward as ever, and my development of claustrophobia is only adding to that. I am still a little unsure of how to react to roommates that actually want to talk to me, and sharing a room, but I think I will get it. I feel like I had more to talk about, but I forgot what exactly it was. Maybe it will come back to me, and perhaps I'll just have more to write about tomorrow after I've gone to more than one class. Woot for school!

School Days

Is it sad that I wish school would just start already? Maybe it is, but today has been extremely boring so I've just been planning for the upcoming semester. Gotta say I'm actually pretty excited.

Despite USU's lack of reliable registration methods, I have made it into all of the classes I need to successfully apply for STEP teaching program (which I am pretty stoked/scared about). This is officially my last semester of English, and then onto the world of teaching. Very nervous, but very excited at the same time for that. I'm really happy that I've found something that I could really do and love in life. Somehow I think that even if I wasn't kind of a typical Mormon girl, I would still want to teach, which makes me even happier about it.

In other news I am taking a ballet class next semester. This kind of makes me a little sick to my stomach. I've recently decided that I miss dancing and this is how I reconciled that void. I haven't done ballet in about 8 years, but I figured I also have 9 years under my belt so digging up that old information shouldn't be too hard right? I guess we'll see. At any rate I'm nervous but excited, hopefully it doesn't kill me.

Also, I am taking a Climate Change class (mostly because it was one that fulfills my QI requirement and the teacher waived the prerequisite hehe). Hopefully there is little to absolutely no math involved, otherwise this could be an interesting semester.

Overall I'm pretty excited for Spring Semester 2011. I'm inching closer to graduation and I couldn't be more excited about that. Woot for school? I have a feeling I'll be singing a different tune come March haha

P.S. I moved back to Bridgerland. So far it has been pretty boring cause everyone is home for the holidays, but I'm excited to see how the ward is and who is still in it and meet new people that have moved in :)

The Light at the End of the Tunnel!

I can see it!

School is so close to being over. All I have to do is whip out three final papers, two final exams and one portfolio and I am home free!

I can do this. Right?

For the Life of Me...

I cannot concentrate! My sister gets home on Tuesday. I start a new job on Monday. I'm skipping out on school all next week and I can't seem to focus on the homework that I really need to do. It's frustrating me, but at the same time I just can't bring myself to focus.

So here I am... on the internet. All I really need to do is read a couple things for a paper I need to start (and by a couple things I mean two twenty page Literary Critical Analysis about a piece of African Literature... No big deal right?) and then the paper is only 3-4 pages yeah? I'm probably going to die, but I'm so freaking excited for my sister to come home, and to be able to have a job! GAH! Anyway, I thought I'd share. Now that I've gotten that out of my system, perhaps I can get something done. Probably not. Shoot.

Things I've learned from College: A series of comments

21. English Major = Lots of reading. Once again, who knew?

22. I have a new respect for people who commute to school. I only live slightly out of the way and I find myself grumbling about it daily. I have a new found respect for people who don't live near the campus they attend.

23. Not having a bed frame isn't such a big deal (I guess this might be more of a life lesson rather than a secular education lesson, but college taught it to me).

24. Blogging, as always is a great deviant from homework. I enjoy it.

25. I still love the Ray B. West even though it's completely secluded.

What's Your Major Again?

"English"

"Oh, what are you going to do with that?"

"Teach."

*Awkward or weird sound usually accompanied by "Good for you." or "Why?"

And here I am to answer this very question. Why do I want to teach? I've actually spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about this question. In all reality, what does Shakespeare, Robert Browning, Robert Frost, Brock Dethier or any other writer and their writings have to do with life or how you live it? In my countless hours of thinking over this, agonizing really, I have split it up into two simple answers.

The history books we read are just a script for tomorrow. No I didn't come up with that, it's from a song by Cary Judd. We have to learn from the past, and what other way is there to learn from the past other than reading about it? And not just history. Fiction often portrays things that have happened, just giving it a different face. That seems like a fairly trite answer; "I want student's to learn from the past." But that's a big reason why for me.

The bigger reason, the biggest reason to me to teach is to perpetuate understanding. More importantly, to perpetuate understanding of people; their customs and deep rooted beliefs. In a nut shell (because I could literally go on forever about this, and in effect have gone on forever about this in many a poor notebook) I want to teach how to look out of another persons eyes. If I could help just one person understand one other person, I think it would be worth it. I don't even know exactly why, but understanding generates compassion, and I think I hold compassion in the highest esteem.

This might seem like a visionary or unrealistic way of looking at it, but I often wonder why people don't take a short time to try to understand someone else. I'm as guilty of this as any other person, and I strongly believe that learning to read, and to read well will help in perpetuating understanding. If one of my students could read something, and understand not only the surface meaning, but perhaps the meaning behind it as well then I would feel like I had done a job worth doing.

Reading is only the half of it. We also have to be able to portray our own point of view in an effective way. This way the circle of understanding would be complete. Now I know this is fairly unrealistic, but in my head it makes sense. How many misunderstandings and misinterpretations could be avoided if more people knew how to effectively get their point across and have other people understand where they are coming from.

So I guess I want to teach to perpetuate understanding, and hopefully generate compassion.

Shakespeare...

Today I discovered why I haven't taken a Shakespeare class in over two years. It's because it is next to impossible to read, at least coherently. Here's how I started on my quest to reading The Taming of the Shrew.

First I read the character list.
Then started into the actual text.
Consulted Sparknotes.
Tried the text again.
Went to the dumbed down Sparknotes version of the character list.
Once again tried the text.
Sparknotes.
Finished the introduction and first act.

Needless to say this is going to be the most time consuming class of my life. If anyone has any tips for reading Shakespeare I would be eternally grateful.

And as a comedic side note, all I can ever think about in that class is a quote from Stardust- "My crew is thinking Shake Spear, where I'm thinking 18th century writer."