2 Mentors, 5 Classes = Best Opportunity

Looking through past posts, I realized I did not share my joy of receiving my placement for student teaching. On Halloween the student teaching coordinator called me, telling me that I was placed at Emerald Ridge High School (high school I graduated from). I was jumping up and down in Target with great excitement. The news could not have come at a better time since I was becoming increasingly frustrated; peers in my program have been getting their placements. Although Del did not have my mentor teacher's name, I was still thrilled to know my placement. About a week later, mom called me up telling me that in the mail, there was a letter from the Puyallup School District. At first I was not going to have her open it; I thought for a second longer and had her open it. And in her hands was my TWO mentor teachers: Dave Rosdahl and Molly Sussee. Dave I had as my senior english teacher. Molly was hired in 2005, a year after I graduated. Thrilled beyond belief, I contacted the two immediately.

Yesterday, I went to meet with Dave and Molly. I could not have asked or dreamed of a better fit. Their personalities combined with mine is perfect. One of the main concerns was having two classrooms, would mean creating two totally different lesson sets (i.e. 2 sets of senior english lessons). However, both Molly and Dave are flexible and will be allowing my freedom to use my own unit/lessons, just as long as I stick to the learning targets the district created. Having two mentors also means running back and forth from two rooms; however, that is only on one day that I need to worry about that. I will be teaching 3 senior and 2 junior classes, with an advisory, and planning period. Since the school is on a block system, I will spending Monday and Thursday with Dave, and then running back and forth between classrooms on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Both are allowing me to tell them when I am comfortable to full-time teach. They said if I am comfortable on the 2nd day, they will hand over the reigns and let me run with it. Again, it is up to me. Molly explained it this way: it is my student teaching experience, it is up to you how you want it to turn out; you need to communicate with us what makes you comfortable and what you need from us.

Communication is something I am great at- no problem.

I stayed for about 2 hours talking. Towards the end, Dave and I were shooting the breeze about just random issues/concerns and how unreal this is. Brian (principal) and Dave were looking through the student teaching prospects and came across my name. First off, Brian was not my principal, but both saw my name and wondered if it was the same girl that graduated years ago from ER. They looked up my name and sure enough it was me. And apparently both of them were excited and said we have to get her back here. That is how it came about.