Five Weeks In

Well, five weeks into student teaching and I love it! I still get scared and nervous sometimes, especially when I'm being observed, but I have been having a lot of fun and I am definitely starting to feel more comfortable. I have learned, however, just how much outside work there is to teaching. Every night, I go home and grade papers and prepare for the next days lessons. I spend hours writing lessons plans (I have to write a formal plan for each lesson since I am still a student), making copies, makes charts, reading through materials and just getting myself mentally ready for another whole day of teaching. Even now, when I am supposed to be on vacation, I have been trying to get a head start on the coming weeks. It's a hectic life I've gotten myself into, but it the end it is truly all worth it.

In other news....well really there isn't much other news. I literally spend my life--eat, sleep and breathe--on student teaching. But seriously the end of the semester is coming fast and I'm not sure how I feel about that. A part of me is really and truly excited to leave school and start this new chapter of my life. The other part of me, however, is scared out of my mind to leave the comfort of my little campus community. To leave the life of a college student behind and have to deal with the realities that exist outside our perfectly manicured lawns. I have no idea what I am doing with myself next year. I am applying for jobs and a part of me still wonders if I should apply for grad-school as a back up. Not that I can afford grad-school right now, but what if I don't get a job?

All in all, the end of the year is sad for me. I don't get to be an RA anymore. I don't get to visit my professors anymore. I don't get to spend hours sitting in my bosses office just bugging and chatting with him. I don't get to have a say in the goings on around campus. I don't get to help underclassmen with their problems and guide them in the right direction. In May, I will be done with my school. I could, I suppose, become what we affectionately call a lifer. A lifer is someone who has graduated, but still seems to be on campus everyday. These are not the ones attending grad school at the college or working for the college, but the ones who come back just to hang out. The ones who are still coming to hang out even though they graduated two or three years ago. Sounds pathetic doesn't it. And yet I can almost imagine being one of them; I can understand how hard it is to let go.

Student Teaching

In exactly three weeks I will be starting my student teaching. I am definitely nervous. I mean, this is what it has all come down to. This is the final deciding factor of whether or not I get to become a teacher. I am only a semester away from officially being a teacher. A real teacher. And yet I can't help but feel that I'm not ready yet, that I don't deserve it yet, that I don't know what I'm doing. Do they really think that I can handle a class of 26 first graders all by myself? Do I really think that I can handle that? I know that once I get in there and things get going that I will step up to the plate and get it done, and if I need help, that's what the real teacher is there for. But what about next year, when there isn't another teacher, when all of those little eyes are looking up at me expecting me to know what the heck is going on and have

it all planned out.

I may be in a bit of a panic right now and I know I'm not exactly thinking rationally. I can do this, and this student teaching experience is going to prepare me for when I have that class of my own. I just need to calm down and believe in myself.

I have to admit though, a part of  me still kind of feels like a fake. Like I can't really be a teacher, that's just something I think about doing sometimes. I love kids, I love being in the classroom, I love knowing that I am teaching them something new. But in the end,  I don't always believe in my ability to be a teacher. I have taken all of the courses, read all of the books, and done all of the observations, but translating that into actually teaching is a scary thing.

Behind all of this nervousness and self-doubt, I am still excited though. Like I said, I love being in the classroom.

The Obligatory Introductory Post

This will be a place for rambling, ranting, hoping, dreaming and expression. Though it isn't strictly a secret, I'm not going to share the link with friends and family. I wish to be completely honest in this one area of my life and that is most easily done if I don't know exactly who is reading this. I can only hope that this will be an outlet of emotion and creativity for me and can, in some way, act as a therapeutic agent at this time of change in my life. Whether there is any one else out there who can benefit from, or at the very least enjoy, what i have to say is not of great concern, but, of course, is a secret hope. We all want our thoughts and opinions to be heard. I don't expect any great reception of my thoughts or feelings, but in putting them here for the world to see I can only expect that someone will read them.

Anyways, it is very nearly a new year and therefore it is a time for new beginnings and to reconcile the past. Cheers to the new year and perhaps a new me.