Last Day of Freedom

Today I woke up bright and early at 6:30. Headed to the school about 7:45. Spent the morning in an inservice type thing. I enjoyed it because they had Panera coffee and bagels. I am not only all about coffee but I'm also about free food. There were several topics covered. 1. They made all the new teachers and interns stand and introduce themselves. I was dreading it. I hate talking in front of people I don't know (great quality for a teacher to have, am I right?). Of course, I was the last to go, but it was over in about 10 seconds. 2. Then there was a discussion about the new teacher evaluations. This was interesting to me because I realized how much pressure there actually is to be a good teacher. That is one thing I am dreading about becoming an actual teacher. 3. Finally, my mentor teacher and all the other teachers involved in the advisory board gave a presentation of how advisory is supposed to be run. I'm actually looking forward to this. Every Monday and Wednesday advisory does some type of activity from the advisory handbook. Every Tuesday and Thursday is academic advising. My favorite day is going to be Friday because it's "Fire pit day" and every last Friday it's a celebration day. Basically, the whole idea is that students can be comfortable getting out anything that is on their mind in a safe environment. I love this, and I could have definitely used it in high school. During the presentation the principal came over and introduced herself to me. So, yeah, I have an in with the principal. Just kidding.

Around 11ish we went back to the classroom and it was continuous work since then. My mentor teacher had me take out all the English books that were in the classroom and in their place on the shelves I had to put all the OGT workbooks and count how many 9th 10th grade editions there were. 262 if you were wondering. Then his wife and 3 daughters stopped by. They are adorable and his 1 year old daughter is the tannest baby I have ever seen. His wide is gorgeous too. I want to know her secret to staying thin after having 3 children. It's probably running around after them because she is with them all day without any rest. One of the reasons I don't really want kids...

Then we took a break for lunch and right after lunch I put names on cards and taped them to the desks. The largest class is going to be 34 students! The smallest is 29! So, I have 4 classes of 30+ and 1 of 29. It is going to be so much fun learning names. Then I had to hang up any posters that fell down. Then, 2 posters fell down again, so we just put them aside and we'll probably try again when the air conditioning works. He then had me create a seating chart. It started off awesome and organized then somehow it decided to turn into a nightmare on me. I was so upset, but I'm done and I'm not touching it anymore!

Finally, we ran through tomorrow's lesson plan. I'm in charge of standing in the classroom and greeting students and pointing them to the board for their task. He told me to be assertive and aggressive when greeting students because this is the one chance to make it our classroom and if I'm passive and shy the students will walk all over me. But no pressure or anything. That is the one thing I've been constantly told I need to work on by my supervisor and if I screw it up tomorrow I not only ruined my chances of classroom management for myself, but I also made it really hard for my mentor teacher. So yeah, no pressure. Tomorrow it's going to be my job to greet students, take attendance, and collect summer homework. I'm both excited and nervous because I don't want to mess this up! The last thing I did was wrote the bell schedule on the board. Gosh, my handwriting is so bad when I print and write on a board. I love cursive. I wish more people were accepting of it! Haha. While I was writing it two boys came in and introduced themselves to me. They were really nice. I remember their names, but I'm not so sure I remember their faces... they played basketball though!

When we were about to leave my mentor teacher told me that he was really impressed by the hard work I've done in these weeks before school started. He said he knows this is where I'm supposed to be and that I show him I want to be there. He said that we'll probably have some issues in the future with lesson plans, etc, but that's okay. He finished by saying he's had some real duds. Haha! This really made me relieved and thankful. I was so worried this summer to be working with him because when I had observed in his class before he came off very professional and he didn't really interact with me (which is okay!). However, I'm soooo sooo sooo glad that he is my mentor teacher. I am truly blessed to be in a position to have someone willing to show me the ropes of more than just the classroom and I'm learning so much.

Well, I should probably relax. Hopefully I can get some sleep tonight! Wish me luck!