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.)