It's a balancing act

PHEW, first week of school is close to being finished! Luckily for myself, I only have one single class tomorrow (no idea how I managed that). Throughout this week there have been a few suprises that popped up which I dealt with.
Last night was the first meeting for the advanced practicum. This must be completed before student teaching, however, over a dozen students were not infomed (including myself) did not know it MUST be completed the semester before student teaching. Thus, since I am not student teaching in the fall, I am not able to take this course, I am a little sad about this. On the flip side, I do understand why this is, the preservice teacher must be ready to jump in, since the last evaluation on the form is asking if the preservice teacher is ready to student teach. Anyways, I don't agree with how the department has set up the block system. The first block, which I took last semester is in the correct order. But the second block, which I am in, should be before the advanced practicum since it is teaching about classroom management, 504/ESL, etc..., and education psychology and in sequential order, then the practicum. Then the preserviced teacher will be ready, with all the knowledge and ideals to put into play. So when the mentor teacher is ready to submit if they are ready to student teach or not, they are able to know that the preservice teacher has had the training and needs to be trained once more and TRULY not ready. Anyways, needless to say last night, after sitting through the 50 minute lecture, the dozen of us had to talk to the professor and he told us that we had to drop the class (yes, after buying the packet that we HAD to bring to class and already opened... thus, cannot return it). I am not too concerned, I just picked up another class instead on Tuesday, Thursday's.

Right now, there is one class which I am concerned about, T&L 470 which is a class that is talking about the laws of 504, ESL, disabilities, etc... Tomorrow we are starting the three in-depth lectures about the actual laws behind all of these. Our test for this is in two weeks-- the notes I printed off are 150 pages and we must know it like the back of our hands. There is so much to know about and we have to cram it into our little brains quickly. So hopefully within the next two weeks, if you have any questions about this area I will be able to fully answer them.

The good news, today warmed up a bit outside, at least for Pullman (36 degrees). The snow is melting a little bit which makes it a little easier to move about. But you know what happens when snow starts to melt, it becomes slush and tons of standing water which is also no fun, but at least the snow isn't building up.