First Week

Oh man...how I love this University! I had one hell of a day during our orientation and workshop meetings. First of all, I had to go renew my membership to NEA, the National Educators Association, for my liability insurance. I was in their office at 7:55 am. At 8:20 pm, I was still there waiting to get the "online situation" straightened out when I impulsively checked my email, double checking the location of my orientation. I noticed this particular email mentioned the meeting started at 8:30...not 9:30 like I read previously. I immediately hauled ass through town, found a parking spot, and hiked it through campus and sat down right before the talk began, just like in the movies. After 35 minutes we were dismissed and then immediately confused. We had schedules prompting us to meet our advisors at 12 noon. It was 9:00 and we had nothing to do till noon, or so we thought. Right before I left to deal with the fingerprint situation-which has now been resolved by the city giving us an extra week to get them turned in, and also adding more dates in town so kids like me don't have to drive to one-horse towns to get fingerprinted by the Sheriff-I was approached by an acquaintance telling us our meetings had been bumped up to RIGHT NOW. Love the university. I got the fingerprint deal straightened out by rescheduling in town and then canceling my old appointment, which I made by the deadline by 20 minutes-after I spent 25 minutes on hold. Anyways, it turns out the scheduling people had three different schedules floating around for the day's events...THREE! It pushed the whole day towards the far side of crazy and we ended up getting out an hour late. Awesome.

In different news, today I got into the classroom for my first stimulating day of observation. Let me be the first to say that my body is NOT used to getting up before 7 am, and after 8 hours in a really uncomfortable chair, sitting very still because the chair makes a lot of noise when moved my body hurts. I rarely sleep past 9:30 on "me days", but the two hours early has put me all out of whack. Eventually I woke up after dawning my suit, wing tips, and some bright lights in my face. 

I basically just sat around all day. For some reason my Cooperating Teacher (CT from here on out) did not prompt me to introduce myself to the students, unlike at the faculty meeting last week. Instead, I got the "he's the guy I told you about yesterday" line. Believe it or not, it puts me at a bit of a disadvantage from the start because it keeps me more removed from the students than letting me talk. Anyways, I got plenty of stares all day from the ladies, as well as the gentlemen, which made me a tad uncomfortable. It kind of makes you want to say something... anything really.I couldn't figure out if it was my appearance, or just merely because I was something different in the room. More on that later I suppose. 

The kids seem to be pretty good thus far. I have two classes of freshman honors Modern US History, and one class of juniors in Liberty & Law. The first two classes were very quiet and well behaved as they diligently worked through their "activity sheets", which is what the "culturally/psychologically in-tuned" professors call "worksheets". They do this because they are language Nazis and they love the psych research that tells them kids associate badness with "work" and then "work" with "worksheets" and then "badworksheets" with "school". Sometimes stuff makes sense, sometimes it doesn't... but in order to not get busted down, I don't say anything. Oh yeah... that reminds me. During our workshop I got busted down for using the term "minority". Evidently that is a pejorative term now and I could have offended a bunch of people. I guess I missed the memo. I didn't try to argue that the term can be explanatorily significant. Next time maybe...where was I? Activity sheets. My CT lives by them. 3-4 every day for each class. That's intense I think. My first unit teaching I will follow his worksheet lead, then ease the students into my ways, which are yet to be determined, but undoubtedly include lots of primary stuff. I started writing out my formal lesson plans (which won't be needed for a week, but I need to get ahead!) today and came to a realization. If I tried to pull out a lesson that had 3-4 activity sheets, my soups would have slapped me... hard. We'll see what they say. Fortunately for me, the student teacher thing is all about dancing around causing trouble and I can knock out an easy unit plan that centers around worksheets and videos, and be fine by claiming that I am not rocking the boat too much too quickly. 

I spent some time getting organized tonight. Which basically included me tediously labeling those little sheets that go into 3-ring binder organizers. Its crazy how bad my handwriting still is. What is also crazy is that the organization thing is all I can handle tonight. Its 9:30 pm, and I need bed, NOW. 

Currently Listening-The Essential REO Speedwagon by REO Speedwagon

 (Shut up. You know those songs are good.)

Depressionista

The last day of freedom before classes is always so strange. Luckily mine ended quickly when I found a 50 page story in my email this morning to be finished for our meeting tomorrow. Hoorah. 

In other news...GO TEAM VENTURE! Season 3 ended tonight. It makes me happy. Goodnight. 

Operation Freak-out is a go!

Awesome news to report today. Let's start backwards. Turns out I scheduled my fingerprinting appointment using the WRONG directions that were sent to me in an email. I downloaded the wrong sheet, which for some reason was sent in the same email with the correct sheet. Bottom line, I got it wrong. Anyways, my appointment still went through the website and I was authorized for the processing...at a restaurant in a sleepy town about 50 miles from here. $20 in gas, 5 hours, and an OK meal of fried clams and shrimp I'm back home, without me being processed. I was told at the restaurant that there was a mistake and I could only be processed after all the drivers of the Oats Transportation Co. were taken care of, despite my appointment being for the first time slot available. After a couple hours of driving around a couple of crappy towns and looking for flea markets I returned to the restaurant. I approached the technician and was informed that I could not be helped because she was finished processing. I got pissed and started stating my case. She then told me that had I come back in time I couldn't be helped anyways because her boss had told her that she was not allowed to process me since I was not part of the Oats Co. 

Fortunately for me, I have to have my fingerprints on record by Tuesday. Unfortunately, all appointments in town are booked for Monday. My only option, without appealing to the bureaucracy directly (which I will try to do Monday morning before my meeting), is to miss my first day of classroom observations and drive another hour and a half out of my way to another sleepy town where the appointments are not full. Yee-haw! 

Oh yeah. Another interesting fiasco story. I went to our ed. offices to turn in my TB test results and establish my proof of professional liability insurance, which is obtained through a national teaching organization. I thought I was good to go since its a year long thing and I signed up in January. I should have until this January, right? That would cover me for this semester and I would renew in January. WRONG. The year long coverage is only for the school year. Despite me not even being covered for an entire school year by signing up in January, I still have to renew by August 31. BUT I have to have it by Tuesday for the university. I searched all over the NEA's website for my renewal link, but they don't provide one. They do however provide one on your specific state's site. It didn't work, so I called the office to try to renew in person since it was 3:30pm on Friday. I still had time! I was informed by the nice lady that the renewal couldn't be done until the renewal lady got back from vacation...which is Monday. WTF?! Seriously? I asked-no way could this be true. Surely there isn't some magical procedure that only one lady, who is on vacation, can handle?? Oh but wait! There was the state specific online site that can handle my renewal! Guess what...the website is down. 

Am I crazy? Perhaps I should have taken care of this at the beginning of the month, but should it really be this difficult? Would it have turned out the same? Probably...I dunno. My brain hurts and I'm very anxious. 

Bureaucracy-300

Me-0

I'm getting a drink...

Currently Listening-Voices by Matchbook Romance

P.S. Oh yeah, I found a gas mask from WWII that is still sealed in the can. Pretty boss.  

Meetings, appointments, oh my!

The next five days will be filled with all sorts of appointments and meetings. I don't actually get into a classroom with students until Tuesday. I finally made contact with my cooperating teacher (CT). Mr. H suggested that I get to some meetings at the high school with the total staff. He seems like a neat guy thus far. Evidently he is a musician, so we will have some common ground. Another interesting thing is that he mentioned he taught with my university observer, Mr. S. That means that I might be able to get a leg up for dealing with his requirements. 

Here is a look at some of the pre-teaching activities that all of us have to do before we can start:

• Wednesday-Staff meeting. Not sure what will go on here, but I'm sure I'll be conspicuously out of place, more hopefully, completely ignored. 
• Thursday & Friday-Room prep with Mr. H. He mentioned we have "a lot of work to do", not sure what that means either. Most likely we will begin devising our plan of attack for the year. I will also have to go to the university to purchase our fabulous "student teacher handbook" that will give me all I need to know for this semester, and possibly the rest of my life...I need to confirm my TB test results, as well as establish my proof of professional liability insurance-$20 a year for insurance by joining a teacher's org. which gives me all the teaching magazines and junk mail I can handle!
• Saturday-This is my fingerprintin' day. My district requires an FBI background check now, which includes fingerprinting. The funny thing about this is that these fingerprint sessions are held for two hours, seemingly randomly throughout the state. The only places that have any appointments available are an hour away or so. My place? Grant's Restaurant in the chicken production capital of the state. Hot damn! Also, it costs $52.20, plus $15 in gas, plus $10 for lunch-I love the pop-up expenses of the education department. 
• Sunday-Nothing! This is a "me day". Perhaps I'll update on the last few days. 
• Monday-Six hours of tell all meetings at the university. Love the university meetings...not really. They are terrible. 
• Tuesday-First day of yours truly in the live classrooms... 

Currently Watching-Mens Olympic Volleyball

Currently Listening-The Escape Frame by the Escape Frame

Some background info-student teaching prep week

Throughout the next seventeen weeks, this blog will be devoted to documenting the perils of the student teacher. Undoubtedly, there will be many highs, and lows, and inevitable freak-outs covered during this period. There seems to be a lot of interesting and/or important things about getting down the details of this sort of program, which will come out in the rest of this evening's blog and in the coming weeks. 

Previous to starting this semester, I have only a slight clue as to what is going on. Here is what I know:

I will spend a semester, or sixteen weeks, teaching some form of social studies at a local high school. This semester will be split into two eight week blocks . I don't know if I will change after the eighth week or not. I assume so in order to experience more classes, but then again...I also know that I will be observed on four lessons. What the observer wants...I'm not sure, although I have heard from some teachers that I need to document each lesson I teach in a three-ring binder. Super math time out! Let's say I have five classes a day. With five days a week that's twenty-five classes a week, times sixteen weeks=400 lessons or so-give or take with the holidays and tests and whatnot. Anyways, here is an interesting confession. I will be teaching "social studies", which include the histories, philosophy (sometimes), sociology, political science, economics, psychology, and geography. During my five years of college, I've had ONE soc. class, TWO political science classes, ONE economics class, TWO psychology classes, and ONE geography class. Let me also say that I did not get "top marks" in those classes. I guess Gen. Eds can be important in college...go figure.  

Now for a bit of background concerning the education program I am involved in. The student teaching program is the last hurdle in the education program at my university. Thus far, concerning the education department, I have completed two thirty-hour practicums, one three hour observation, and forty plus hours of volunteer work. These coincided with about five total courses. The most outstanding result of following the minimum requirements of this program is that I have spent only TWO hours in front of students, teaching two lessons plans. TWO. Starting next week I will be attempting to work through those 400 or so lessons I mentioned. But, thanks to the lovely, unstandardized world of student teaching, I really don't have any idea exactly what I will be taking on. Needless to say, I am a bit anxious about taking on this kind of teaching load. For some strange reason, I don't exactly feel prepared with my three methods courses (one methods course was devoted to righting the wrongs of the previous course) and two hours of teaching. One thing I have figured out thus far: teaching is quite difficult...if you do it well. 

Considering some of the questions I have received by everyone around me, I should set straight the situation of the student teacher for my final remarks here. I will not get paid. In fact, I had to pay for fifteen hours of credit in order to student teach, which as I have hinted at thus far, is like actual teaching. Some people have compared this to some sort of warped communism, or even slavery. I agree wholeheartedly. Its a warped system, where students have to pay and are not compensated. At the very least, I should get paid minimum wage, like an internship. The really funny thing about this is that our administrator of the program demands that any student taking place in the student teaching refrain from working as it will take away from concentrating on teaching. So. In accordance with her desires, I will be living without a job and working on teaching for 12-14 hours a day, and in two or three months, this blog will be brought to you from wi-fi hot zones, trying to charge my computer for free while I make due on a diet of scraps left over from people who don't throw their trash away in restaurants. 

Currently Reading-Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts by Sam Wineburg

Currently Listening-Plans by Death Cab for Cutie