Friday, August 12, 2011

Maybe this should have come first

I have decided to keep this blog going while I am student teaching as a type of journal to process what I have learned each day.

To keep with the whole privacy thing, I'm not going to post where I am teaching or who the teacher is. I will probably just refer to him as Mr. X or "my teacher." And of course I would never name any student names.

Well, I just wanted to let that be known, so there it is.

Student Teaching begins in T-minus 3 days!

After almost 3 years of preparing to be a teacher one of my last steps begins in less than a week and not to exaggerate, but I am freaking out... just a bit though.

At the beginning of the summer my plans were to take my last two classes and finish them by mid July and spend the rest of my "summer" preparing for Student Teaching (S.T.). But then I found out I had to write one final History paper (which I think I got an A on!!) with a two week extension which took me to the last week of July. Then it was a week of vacations and now its today with 3 whole days left till I start S.T. Of all the things that I have done over my life there has been some knowledge on my part of what is expected of me and this time I have NO IDEA where to begin!

I have had all the textbooks and I know my schedules, but am I supposed to be making lesson plans or UNIT plans? What does my teacher expect of me to be bringing to the table the first week of class?

What I am not nervous about is the actual teaching part or meeting the students or waking up on time (well at least not yet, ask me again Monday night)... those parts I am super excited about! I can't wait for the bell to ring and the students to come in and class to start!!

So, my plan for today and probably tomorrow is to actually open the textbooks that have been sitting in my living room since May and look them over... get some ideas brewing and not worry about it any more. My mom, who is also a teacher, keeps telling me that I don't have to do anything, that my teacher will tell me what I need to do, so I'm going to go with that for right now.