Week of Teaching Math and such.

 So, I’m insanely busy. Who’d have thunk, right? Ha. 

My mentor teacher proves to be continually trying. She got on my ass Thursday morning for coming in four minutes late. The clocks at Ladd are all 5 mins fast, and my World Clock in my iPhone isnt. She says they’ve tried to fix the clocks every year, but it only makes it worse. Since we use a bell system, she says I need to run on the school’s clock. Okay, but here’s the problem with that. I need to drop Kasin off at Denali (1 block from our house) at 8am, and no earlier. School starts at 8:30 for him, so you can’t drop kids off before 8. I have to drop Milo off around 8:10-8:15, because otherwise his class isn’t in their room yet, and if I have to drop him off in the preschool room, it freaks him out and he screams and cries. I JUST got him to stop crying and screaming in his own class, I don’t need to deal with that mess. He turns 3 in February and then they will start transitioning him to the preschool room, which I am already het up about, so I don’t really want to talk about that at all.

So, in short, I need to drop Milo off and just bolt out of the building the second I set him down, haul ass ACROSS TOWN (since the School of Ed couldn’t be bothered to put me anywhere convenient for my internship…) and be at Ladd by 8:20, because I have to walk across the entire lot and then through the whole building to get to my room, and I need to be IN my room AT 8:30, BY THEIR CLOCK, not the real world’s clock, which is 5 mins fast. So, I have 5 mins to get ACROSS TOWN from daycare to Ladd.

The alternative is to make Kasin walk to school on his own in the freezing cold (only a five minute walk, but it’s already snowing and like, 20*), take Milo in earlier and drop him off at 8am to the preschool room where he will cry and scream hysterically when I leave. Sounds fun, right? Yeah, well, it’ll give me just enough time to be 10 minutes early like she demands I have to be. Fucking ridiculous.

She is also having me teach a lot more stuff than I am required to teach. She gave me a worksheet for Monday to teach compound sentences, which honestly I don’t mind doing, but I’ve been taught to teach with a LESSON PLAN and that involves planning and advanced notice of what I’ll be covering. I’ve never taught any of these subjects before, I’ve never done ANYTHING with 6th graders before, so I need a little more notice than "Here, this is what you’re teaching today." She has me doing DOL and spelling, grammar, and english. Most of the time, grammar is from the text book, so I can just follow along with that on the overhead/doc camera and I’m fine. But this is just a work sheet with no intro or additional information, so I need to look that up and make up a plan and notes in order to be prepared and effective. Sometimes she hands me things 30 mins before I’m going to teach them, and then freaks out if I take too long or don’t do it well/exactly how she would. It’s incredibly frustrating, BECAUSE…

UAF has me planning all of my required lessons a month or two or three in advance. I have to teach a week of Math the second week of October, and she has had us working on those lesson plans for the last two or three weeks. This is a problem because none of the mentor teachers know where they will be at in math that far in advance. Debby didn’t give me my topic until the day before the due date (last Wed) and I’m still working on my plans. I’m fine with having to get it done so far in advance, but I’m not fine with only having one day to try to get it turned in, having to bargain with the teacher to get my deadline pushed back, and then having to come up with six lessons for a subject I’ve never had any experience with and have no guide for. (My mentor doesn’t use our district’s required math text, even though it’s REQUIRED, so I have nothing to work off of, just the topic.) I’m supposed to have all six plans done tonight, but so far I’m half way through #4. I can probably crank ’em out, but they won’t be as good as if I’d had more time. They’re rushed, for sure, and I think it shows. They’re good enough plans, but they’re not as good as they could be, and that frustrates me.

And I still need to look up stuff for compound sentences. Sheesh. 

Things at home are iffy, too. Milo has been alternately adorable and a giant pain in the ass, screaming for unreasonable amounts of time and over ridiculous things. This is usually over the weekends, when he’s bored and not at daycare. He often tells me  "NO! I stay daycare!!" when I go to pick him up, but he wants me to stay there with him. lol. He just loves it because he is busy and there are so many friends and activities. He has learned a ton of new songs and sings them all the time… the Baby Bumblebee song, the Veggie Tales theme song, Wheels on the Bus, Old McDonald, Twinkle Twinkle, and will now sing his ABCs almost perfectly (he skips J and K)! I had tried to get him to sing his ABCs for ages and ages but he would just stare at me and sometimes sorta mumble along. Now he does it really well! 🙂

Kasin has been a huge pain in the ass at home, "forgetting" his homework and his chores, having friends in the house before we get home and making them do his chores for him, he was busted outside at least once playing before an adult got home (NOT COOL, KID.) and told me every day for a week that he didn’t have homework even though he did, and it was just in his backpack. He also did a couple of really half-assed chores a few times and got in big trouble. At school, though, he’s been awesome, and having a great time. His teacher is AWESOME. They have done so many art projects, they made up songs/poems about the water cycle, Kasin wrote a "rap" about percipitation. It was completely adorable! He also told me about his teacher lets them work with modeling clay when she reads to them, and they make characters from the story while she reads, then they can share with the class afterwards. They do lots of creative art type projects for their homework, and she does tons of experiments and nature walks. She didn’t send home any homework for the first couple of weeks, because the weather was so nice, she wanted the kids to be free to play outside and not have school work at home. She’s amazing.

Kasin also scored a 99.9% on his ELP placement test. He now has to take the academic skills test and score a 95 or higher on it to get formally admitted. (ELP is like GT, they just don’t call it Gifted and Talented anymore, because it’s condescending to kids who aren’t in it.) I was really proud and impressed. He’ll be put on the testing schedule and then I’m going to start working on reviewing his addition and subtraction flash cards, and working on multiplication facts (they really haven’t worked on multiplication at school yet.) and he’s been begging me to bring home cursive practice pages for him. So hopefully he does well on the academic screening.. it’s early in the year, and he’s kind of out of practice, especially for math. He’s always been a great reader and writer, so I’m not worried about that portion. I’m also not clear on whether he has to score a 95 in all three areas, or a combined 95 over all three, or a 95 in at least one area, or what. So I might ask about that… if I ever have time.

Alright. That’s all I got in me.

HEY, anybody remember reading a short story I wrote, called "The Ghost of my Ex-Girlfriend’s Car" ? I know I posted it somewhere in this diary, TWICE even, but I can’t find it. I wanted to use it for my Language Arts class, but I can’t find the damn thing. I looked through all my entry titles, but it didn’t pop up.. I even upgraded to OD+ so that I could search my diary, but the OD+ membership hasn’t registered yet. (left a note on the EDW or whatever it’s called diary.)  If you remember what year or month or… ANYTHING about that short story, I’d love to know where the hell it is. lol

I hope everyone is happy and healthy, love and miss you guys! <3
~Me