By Popular Demand

Ok, so maybe Rene' was the only one who asked for it, but still. I'm sure there are others who are just dying to know what's going on in my life right now. Right? Someone? Anyone? Oh, well. *sigh* I guess its probably b/c not a whole lot is going on in my life. Let's see...school, school, more school, Blink 182 concert, did I mention school? School is my life. I walk to school every morning, which is pretty cool. It takes me just 15 minutes, even if I walk slowly. I get to the classroom before the kids do, and I help set up for the day. I've slowly started to take more responsibility for the class. Right now I'm teaching the "Making Meaning" lesson, which is a program for enhancing comprehension in reading. Basically, the teacher reads lots of great children's stories to the kids, and then we discuss together different strategies. We've talked about visualizing and inferring so far. Each week we read a story from the Basal (reading book) and the kids take a comprehension test each Friday on it. It is open book, but you'd be surprised how many kids don't do very well.... Let's see, oh, I've also started to take over teaching things like prefixes and suffixes as well. We'll see how that goes :) I also give the spelling test on Fridays. Sometimes I have to make up sentences for the words, and it cracks me up how I can't think of a good sentence for a word like "gray." My sentence is something like "I have a gray crayon." Pretty dumb, huh? My biggest challenge is classroom management. I have a hard time knowing what to ignore and what to stop. I'm learning, but I just need more experience. The best part of my day is when a kid says to me, "Mrs. Emerson, you're so nice!" or "I really like your sweater," or "I hope I can be in your class some day." It makes it all worth it.

So, teaching is actually the easiest part of being a student teacher. It is the rest of it that is complicated. Like remembering to send in my weekly journal on Saturday night (not Sunday!!!) or writing up my 20-30 page "Impact on Student Learning," (12 pages down!), or getting my portfolio put together. It is also nerve-wracking when my supervisor comes in to see me. I'm not intimidated by her, but it is hard sometimes to have someone watching me. The kids act differently, too, but usually for the better.

Anyways, that's about it. Matt's still on 3-section duty. So I get to see him sometimes at least. We try to make the best of the time when he is home. We actually went clothes shopping yesterday, at the Limited. We had a good time; we needed to spend some coupons we had. Last time we were there, they gave us 4 coupons worth $25 off a $50 purchase. So, we spent $200 and only paid $100. Pretty nifty, huh? Also pretty good considering our last purchase we saved about 50% as well.

OK, well, I should get some housework done, now that it is getting to be evening time around here. Maybe cook me up some dinner. I feel decently productive today, but if I can go to bed with a clean house, it will be a bonus! :)

~Pam