I'm home for the holidays and yet still swamped in coursework for my certification program. I'm balancing holiday-heightened family life, making deadlines and trying to find a job in another state. It's exhausting but mostly fun. Mostly.

I like journals. (I have a blog, don't I?) I like reflecting. I believe in the value of reflective practice. However, my fellow student teachers and I have reflected ad nauseum about our student teaching experience, and it seems ridiculous to ask us to reflect on unit plans and lessons that we already reflected about in our journals and during seminar. It isn't going to do us any good (at this point, it falls neatly in the "tedious work I wish I didn't have to do" category) and it's only going to give our professor at least 3 more pages of work to read per person! I keep hoping I'll get a "new message" alert from my email software that announces our deadline has been extended or the requirements cut.

Okay, enough procrastinating... I'd better get to work so I can play with my cousins tonight! I promise my next post will be more exciting and less whiny. =)

Time Passing

Well, it's official, student teaching is now over. I had hoped to be able to keep up this blog while student teaching, but our daily journaling requirement had to take priority, and I would have had to do some serious editing to those entries in order to make the readily availabe to the public. I kept meaning to at least try; it never happened. I guess that somewhat defeats the purpose for which I created this blog, and I'm sorry it turned out this way. That's the kind of semester this has been.

Overall, student teaching was amazing and the single hardest project I have ever undertaken. Every single day was an adventure. My students suprised me constantly, positively AND negatively, and frustrated me often. Some of my collegues amazed me with their dedication and style, and others disappointed me, mostly by living up to various stereotypes, the worst being the "burnt out, useless teacher."

Okay, there will be more, including job-searching and more reflection as I put together my portfolio for certification over the next month or so. Hopefully then there will be actual teaching to write about here. In the meantime, I'm signing off.

Back to School

Well, I didn't mean to stop writing for two weeks, but life's been busy and lacking in internet availability. However, now that it's the weekend, the new apartment is set up (and newly cleaned), all crises seem to have resolved themselves and the teaching adventure has begun, I'd say it's time to get writing.

Grown-up life (a.k.a. "the real world") got off to a rocky start, though it's evening out now. I have decided I intensely dislike the DMV (MVC here) and it's fastidious rules that have caused me endless inconveniences, expenses and anxiety in the course of just a week. Everything's basically been resolved now, but I still need to wait several more days before I can plate and actually USE my car. On the up side though, I'm loving the almost ridiculous picturesque-ness of this place and all that goes with it. This morning, I went for a run in the cool crisp fall air, and as I was finishing my loop, through the center of town, I saw all these people out for coffee, a pastry and the Sunday morning paper at all the local coffee shops and bakeries, or sitting on their front stoops with neighbors. Though I couldn't help but gag, I also enjoy that this is the kind of place where we do those sorts of things.

The start of student-teaching, thankfully, was much smoother than arriving back to NJ. Already, after only a couple days actually going into the school, I feel myself settling into the routine and rhythm of work life and everything I'm juggling (full-time student teaching, a side job, a class, and a personal life?) and it feels good. The high school I'm at is enormous and I'm sure I'll get lost at least once, but since it's divided into themed smaller learning communities, getting to know my work environment and the students that are a part of it seems less daunting. Nonetheless, knowing I'll actually be teaching in a little over a week is still pretty intimidating. It's funny how life works out - somehow 3 out of my 4 close friends from college are all teaching also. As though the fact that we're no longer really students weren't enough to process, we're also each in charge of students!?! Just yesterday, three of us sat around for well over an hour talking about our experience thus far, and how our "inner city" students weren't nearly as bad as everyone led us to believe they'd be. It's not going to be easy, but it's safe to say I don't think my situation deserves even half the raised eyebrows and wide-eyed stares of disbelief I got every time I told someone (from family members to complete strangers) what I was going to be doing after graduation. And of course, it helps that I've got plenty of people to sit back and debrief with about the experience!

Well, I'd better get to the work I have to do for this week. Until next time!

Well, here goes nothing. I've decided it might be fun to chronicle my venture into the "real" world of post-collegiate survival. Yes, survival. I don't know if anyone else will find it interesting, but I welcome the challenge to make the everyday entertaining.

I finally have a car of my own, I'm moving into my first actual apartment in a week, and I will be working full-time as a student-teacher in an inner-city high school (no pay!), while holding a part-time job(s) on the side to pay the bills, writing applications for the proverbial "next step" and trying to keep some semblance of a personal "life." So presumably these posts shall be a record of my experiences in the classroom, whatever I manage to do outside of that, and musings about where I'm going next.

Welcome to my world - enter at your own risk.