Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Humpday

Maybe I've got this "waking up at 5:20 am" thing down. I am not a morning person, and I never was. Something in my body makes me wake up whenever it gets dark. It's like a strange curse. I could have been up for 20 hours and be completely exhausted, but once it gets dark outside I get energized and decide that there's a million things I want to do. Oh, me...

Student teaching is still going well. It's tiring, especially in the afternoon. I have four classes back to back, and it begins to feel like a broken record after a little while. Last semester wasn't as monotonous since I taught 7th and 8th grade. But since it's only 7th grade this time, six classes of the exact activities gets to me a little bit. My main challenge now is memorizing names. I have a good chunk memorized now, but there's still those kids whose names I cannot remember for the life of me.

"Tristan" was a popular name for 1995-1996. I have four of them. So were the names "Haley", "Chandler", "Zoe", "Madison", "Madeline" and "Ashley/Ashlyn". It's so funny. If I forget a girl's name, I can usually guess it by saying one of those names.

I have been learning so many new strategies and activities to use in the classroom. I also get a hard "master copy" of every activity we do in class each day. Oh, and my mentor teacher is going to let me hook my hard drive up to her computer and take all of her documents and lessons. Did I mention that my mentor teacher is awesome?! Seriously, she is great. She is so flexible and laid back, but SUPER organized for every class. I have a composition notebook that I take with me every day. I write in it different strategies that I like, ideas I have, and things to apply to my own classroom. The kids love her and she has amazing classroom management. I think she is Superwoman in disguise!

On a little bit of a different note, wedding planning has slowed down recently because of student teaching. I feel like my evenings disappear so fast! I get home at 5:00, relax a little, eat dinner, take a bath and then go to bed at 9:30 or so. It's just ridiculous! There's barely any time to do any sort of major planning. Tomorrow I am going to order my wedding dress, though, so that should be pretty exciting! I love it.

Austin and I have gotten some of the major things out of the way so far: date (January 10, 2009), ceremony and reception site, some musicians, rehearsal dinner site, honeymoon location and tickets are booked, wedding dress is chosen and about to be ordered, and I've thought some about colors for bridesmaids' dresses. I want to use blue, and I like a darker, deeper blue that is sometimes refered to as "midnight blue". It is SO hard to find in a style I like and for a price I like!
Well, I need to go get ready for bed now. I really want to be in bed and ready to go to sleep by 9:00!! (Let's see how much luck I have with that...)
-Katie

1 comments:

-Erin said...

Hey Katie,
Thank you for your comment. I'm doing much better now and I know that however much all of those circumstances may upset me, my hardships are nowhere near that of my friends and family!

I am going to substitute teach again, I just missed the orientation before school started because I had to be in Oregon for the funeral. So I have to wait until this Wednesday to go to the next orientation. I'm so excited to go back! I put my two weeks notice in at Academy today so it will be nice to work normal hours again and do something I really like!

I'd love to talk to you more sometime too about everything! Its been a really long time and I miss our conversations! Sounds like your loving student teaching and I hope it keeps getting better for you! Talk to you soon!

-Erin