I didn't fall off the face of the earth

Update on life since the last blog

May - Graduated college, went back to Sterling, and did lots and lots of subbing and e-mailing trying to find a teaching job

June - More subbing, got a sub job that lasted the rest of the school year, got an interview at PV, moved out of the parents house, found out Heather was pregnant

July 1st-4th - probably the most exciting 4 days of the month, July 1st - got called to work the first half of summer school, which is a pretty sweet deal work 16 days from 8-1 get $3,000 (the broke recent college graduate said yes, plus I still hadn't heard back about my PV interview or gotten any other interviews). July 2nd - teacher workday for summer school come home to find an e-mailing me offering me a teaching job at PV (I accepted of course), July 3rd - got my first coach purse from my favorite girls (and Ed), July 4th - turned 23!

The rest of July - I don't believe too many other exciting things happened other than finding out Virginia was pregnant (I made sure not to drink the water at Glory Days)

August - went to the lake for a few days, got to hang out with some of the newest members of the family, Dylan and Billy, (two of the cutest little boys ever). Then came home about 2 days before I started all my teacher workdays (which if you are a brand new teacher and new to Loudoun county is about twice the amount of days of a regular teacher) Lets just say after about the third day I had info coming out my ears and all I wanted to know was what classes I was going to be teaching. By the end of the month I knew I would be teaching Algebra I (mostly 9th graders) and Algebra II (mostly juniors and seniors with sophomores and freshman sprinkled throughout)

September - December - These months have kinda all run together. They've been full of lots of working, both at PV and Glory Days (bartending once a week either Saturday night or Sunday during the 1 and 4 pm games) plus tutoring and lots of other school type activities.

In most recent news, for possibility the first time ever my 8th block class did not drive me insane. I don't want to jinx it but just maybe these kids are starting to mature. Saying this probably means they will be horrible on Wednesday but at least I know I'm not fighting a losing battle. :)

Just So My Mother Will Stop Complaining

So for the last week or so my mother has gladly reminded me that I haven't updated my blog. I'm glad she has time to sit around and just check to see if there is any new info on here. It isn't like I don't call her almost everyday to tell her the exact same stuff that ends up on here.

Well, I have manage to survive teaching a full teacher load for my required two weeks. Well, really I skipped a day but life will go on. Plus, it was the only day I missed all semester and two out of 3 classes were in assemblies. So really, I skipped the easy day. Teaching the full load wasn't that bad at all. I now know for sure the last 5 years haven't been a waste and I still am that crazy girl who WANTS to teach high schoolers math. I think the hardest thing was not having the out of school time to work on stuff due to gymnastics and shooting (but we all know that I'm not giving either of those up).

I have worked my way back down and only have one class to teach a day. As busy has teaching all 3 classes was I would take that over the boredom that is starting to set in with only teaching one. I know realize why my cooperating teacher has read so many books this semester. As much as I am ready to get out of here, there's definitely some kids I'm going to miss. Some of them were even asking if they could come to graduation, it was really sweet. However, I told them they would have to be in Radford at 10 in the morning and many of them said they would just tell me congratulations on my last day here.

Last weekend ended my collegiate clay target career. It was extremely bittersweet. As much as I wanted to knock out a lot of the people on my team by the end of the year, I'm definitely going to miss it. But now I think I'm going to start going to shoots around the state with my coach next year. I could actually win some money shooting now!

So graduation is Saturday and I have to get all the stuff I have accumulated in Radford over 5 years packed up. This has taught me that the best time to clean out your stuff is when you have to move it 400 miles away. I have managed to throw away almost as much as I have packed. At the rate I'm going everything other than furniture would fit in one car. However, I haven't done much with my bathroom and closet. And I know I won't find much to throw away in either of those places.

As stressful as my life was about a month ago, teaching a full teacher load and having no idea what I was doing next year, things are quickly falling into place. I am going to look at a place to live next week, have an interview with a part-time job next wednesday and should hear back from a full-time job in the next two weeks or so. I guess I was stressing for nothing. I SURVIVED! Now all I have left is two and a half days of student teaching, a night or two out with my college friends, then its graduation and off to the real world, and I can say is BRING IT ON!

Wow Time Flys

Time flies when you're grading and planning lessons. Since I've posted last I have had a week of teaching one class a day and today was the start of teaching two classes a day. I think it will be a few weeks before I take over the full class load. I definitely need to get used to planning, grading, and teaching for two...classes that is. hehehe. I went from having 4 1/2 hours to plan/grade during the school day to having 3 hours with twice the stuff to do. This is also my first week of going to school all week since starting my student teaching.

I have learned the teachers pretty much would almost rather have a two hour delay than a snow day. Here's why, you only get so many snow days but their isn't really a limit on how many delays you can have. Plus, you get to sleep in a little later and instead of having the kids for an hour and a half per block you only have an hour. Basically the day flies by. Its awesome.

So on top of all my school work gymnastics and shooting have gone into their busy competition season. It seems like every weekend from now till graduation has something planned already for it. I know I like keeping busy but its getting a little exhausting, luckily shooting helps relieve the stress at least for a little while.

Now its time to vent. WHY DO KIDS INSIST ON WRITING SO YOU CAN BARELY READ THEIR WORK??? I seriously think they do it on purpose. Cause I've seen them write neatly from time to time but 4 out of 5 assignments I'm trying to figure out if its a 6, 8, or 0. And then there's their names. At least write your name neatly so I know who to give the grade to otherwise you're just gonna get a zero for not doing the assignment.

So today I took over another class. This class is essentially an honors class so these kids are used to doing a decent amount of work and usually its a little challenging. Well, on their warmup for today they only had to answer true or false that's it. They were all a little stunned but got working after I confirmed that all they have to do was choose true or false. With that one of the boys in my class informs me that I am his new favorite geometry teacher. I turned to him and told him that I wasn't going to be by the end of class. He looked confused and went on working. Well, today they started working with If-Then statements and basically the whole thing is rewrite sentences in different forms. By the end of class, the same boy calls out to my cooperating teacher to inform her that she is back to being his favorite geometry teacher. I just smiled and laughed to myself cause I knew he would change his mind.

Snowless Snow Day

So yesterday we had a "snow" day. It was really more of a "the roads are probably going to be slick let's just cancel school" day. I am completely not complaining. It was a nice relaxing day off that allowed me to catch up on laundry and other stuff around the house. Then today I woke up to a 2-hour delay. SWEET! I love to sleep in so the delay was excellent. On top of that the classes were only an hour which made the day fly by. It was decided today that I start taking over classes the middle of next week. I'll take over one for about a week and then I'll take over the other class. I'm super excited and nervous and that same time but I think I'll do fine.

I Thought They Taught Handwriting in School

I was grading papers today and putting them in the grade book and I had the hardest time trying to figure out whose name was on the paper. Common now its high school you would think the kids would know of the legibly write their names on their papers. Apparently, they like to sign their signatures on their papers so I can spend 5 minutes trying to figure out who to give the grade to.

1 Week Down

So Friday marked the end of my first week of student teaching. It was a short easy week which was nice. I don't see the other 14 weeks being as easy but I don't think they'll be that bad either. The two classes I'm teaching are pretty small 15-20 kids in each. My Friday was full of meeting the classes and grading papers. Yes on their first day of the new semester they had graded assignments to do. After meeting the classes I think this is going to be a really good experience.

It Only Gets Easier on Day 2

So I thought my first day was easy but day 2 was even easier. I had to be at a training session for the county at 10 am, yay being able to sleep in. When we told about our training we were told to go to the training then to our placements unless our cooperating teachers told us otherwise. Well, mine did. Due to the snow day they had on Friday, their last days of exams got moved to today so they were done with classes at 11:35. Well, when I got out of training I had a text from my cooperating teacher saying that I didn't need to drive out because the exams and grades were already done. So I was home hanging out on the couch by noon. I don't get why people think student teaching is so hard. Lol.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. It my first day all day at the school with the kids there. I'm super excited and a little nervous at the same time.

I Survived My First Day

Today was my first day of student teaching. I got lucky and had it really easy. It was a teacher workday. So first instead of being there at 7:15 I didn't have to be there till 8, sweet! Then there was breakfast when we got there, again sweet! Which brings us to the boring part of the day which was sitting through a technology lecture thing and an SOL/ No Child Left Behind lecture thing. As uninteresting as they were they were pretty informative. After our lectures we had about an hour and half before lunch time. So I got to do the typical intern job of photocopying, hole punching and stapling. I'm getting to be a pro at it.

Then my teacher and I sat down to talk about the plan for the semester which includes be teaching the two geometry class full time starting in about two weeks. I'm super excited! However, the two classes are quite different. One is a one semester geometry class. The other is the second part of geometry. Now for those of you who are confused about one semester geometry and the second part of geometry let me explain. At the school I'm at they do semester classes. So the students have 4 classes a semester for 90 minutes every day then take finals and their SOL's in January. Then switch to 4 new classes for the rest of the year. So the one semester class is really like having a class all year for those of us who are used to having 7 or 8 classes for the whole year. And the part two class is as if it were spread over 2 years. I like that the semester and kids are changing now because my first full day with the kids in the room is Friday and it is also the first day of the new semester, which makes the transit of me into the classroom so much easier because I'm there from day one.

After a little bit of planning, it was time for lunch. We went out to a mexican restuarant with some the other teachers, so I was able to get to know the other people I would be working with before the organized chaos of the new semester begins. That's all for now. I'll let you know how things go on day 2, its supposed to be an easy day again SWEET!