PHEW!!!

These past two days have been a typical college life, more explicity non-stop fun. Thursday was a very chaotic day which ended up with me eventually not even answering my cell (for any of you who called, sorry). OH PAUSE, side story...

Before student teaching one part of the process is getting fingerprinted. When I thought of this, I imagined going in with the paper sheets and ink pad, however, I was pleasantly suprised with the new technology. It is all done electronically. When you place your fingers on the pad, it instantly shows up on the screen- no fuss and no mess!!

Okay, continuing on. In between 1 pm and 5:30 pm I had the following homework to complete (no, I did not wait for the last minute to finish this either): respond to four high school student's papers online who are in Spokane and grade their papers, post a paper for Sociology and a literature course, complete my artifacts for the mock IEP meeting (which my group could potentially go on Friday in front of the entire class). The reason I had to complete all of this by 5:30 was because I had to work and close up the cafe. I knew I would be able to get everything completed except the mock IEP evidence/ artifacts. I could take a chance and not complete the artifacts, but if I didn't, I was assumed the chance of the professor (Matt) calling up my group would be a 100%. But, I decided not to worry about it TOO much.

Anyways, I got home from work and crashed since I had been up since 4:30, however my alarm was set for 5:00. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sleep through the night very well, I had too much going on through my mind. When my alarm went off this morning at 5:00, I was not ready to get up, needless to say I hit the snooze button. I was prepared and planned ahead because I knew last night that I would do that in the morning. My second alarm was a friend who woke me up because I told him to call me when he woke up at 5:15. Still having things to do this morning, I set out on my way to finish what I needed to accomplish before class at 11. This included working on the artifacts and reviewing my student and what I am doing as his Language Arts teacher to help him (you know how I said I wasn't going to stress about it too much, well, I lied). I finished the artifacts which includes: a reading quiz, journal, reading project, behavior log, vocabulary worksheets, and outlined notes of the book which are all graded and responded on by myself. It is hard as an English major to write as a 7th grade boy who is writing and reading at a 4th grade level with ADHD. Also, I had to show in graphs how he was progressing as well as questions that I have about the student to help him succeed and showing what I am doing to help accomodate this student, and know about ADHD and his learning disorder like the back of my hand. Good stuff. Okay, so the artifacts are done but the outline of what I will say with my group on Tuesday is not completed and our group hasn't had the chance to meet outside of class yet. PHEW! I am sure you know where this is going...

First this is what I thought of while this next part happened (trying to put a pleasant spin on it), "The strongest oak tree of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun, it's the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun," (unknown).

Sitting in class as Matt walked in, he asked if a group wanted to volunteer to go. Of course, nobody raised their hands (duh). He was looking for a specific group who has a student that has a learning disorder and ADHD... oh wait, that was my group! We tried to talk our way out of it, but he didn't care about our excuses. During the mock IEP meetings on Monday and Tuesday, we will not have an audience watching us, so having the entire class watch us was a little much. Of course we had an order in which we were speaking to the parents, prinicpal, and special education teacher and yes, I was first. Not fully knowing what to say or what I should say for that matter since I was the first of the entire class to go, I dove into it. Searching my way through all of the information that I had for the student, explaining what I was doing to help the student, defending what I have done in class, answering the questions the parents had, etc... etc... all my peers staring at me I finally just ended with, "I guess I am done with my portion..." Oh goodness yes, it was not a good time. I think it was the longest hour of my life thus far. The good news is that we were able to feel our way through a meeting (still not knowing what to fully expect on Tuesday), but at least we know how to improve as a group and individually. However, it was a nice little suprise for all three of us today for that class.

Later after that I decided to relax a bit and went to the first home baseball game. It was fun and I love baseball. Butch was there, entertaining us kids and then Tony Bennett walked in and the fans that were there gave him a nice little applause; he looked a little suprised when that happened but as always very happy.

Happy weekend to you all!!! Only 2 weeks to go until spring break!