An end to a fabulous journey

I officially have my Master's of Education with certification for secondary education in biology. It feels like time has passed by far too quickly and I am kind of sad not to be in school anymore. Student teaching was phenomenal, I learned more in this one semester than I did in the whole year of classes and lesson planning. My students were amazing and awe inspiring and I am glad to finally have a real profession to look forward to. For now I am substituting for my mentor teacher while he is away on his honeymoon and in February I will be substituting for a chemistry teacher. From there hopefully I can get my foot in the door of the amazing school that I've been at, but if not I will still be looking for a teaching job.

Nevertheless, I feel that I have sort of outgrown this blog, it is full of my blatherings about Europe and Germany and school, and sadly I have no more to write on those things. I hope that someday I will get back into writing poetry, or maybe I will think of something else to write about but I think that this blog deserves to go into retirement. At least until I get my doctorate (yeah right). Until then, Auf Wiedersehen.

Oktober Break!

Finally I get a breather from student teaching! So far it has been the best experience in my graduate career! My mentor teacher is great, the students are great, the school is amazing, and I love it! I have been improving so much as a teacher and I have learned more from taking control of the classroom than I have from all my internships and classes. It has definitely been stressful and crazy at times but I feel that it has been worth it.

Now I finally get some time to sleep in yay! And figure out what I am going to teach the rest of the semester!

It's Almost Over!

Summer is almost over and that means summer school is also almost finished! Like always, I am procrastinating on my final paper and on a presentation I'm supposed to put together. But to my credit, I have been very very busy lately.

Last week I babysat Monday, surprisingly got called in to work at the hospital Tuesday thru Thursday and spent the weekend with Rudy and took care of two dogs, 3 chickens and a horse.

I have also diligently been trying to improve my appearance so that I can be confident while student teaching. I have been putting scar removal gel on my garish arm scars, I have been using go blonder shampoo, conditioner, and spray to turn my dirty blonde hair a slightly more appealing shade. I signed up for a gym membership today so that I can start to get in better shape! I am going to go to a yoga class tomorrow morning and depending on how I feel I might try Zumba after. And earlier today I went shopping with Mom and we found some nice new slacks and professional looking shirts so that I will look nice when I'm student teaching.

I'm kind of nervous but still excited to student teach. My mentor teacher seems really cool and I know Campo Verde will be an awesome school. Only eight days away!

Summer

Alas, my summer vacation has come and gone because yesterday I started summer school. The two weeks I had off were wonderful but the time definitely went by too fast. I now get to spend the rest of my summer doing chores, homework and attending school four nights a week. So far it seems like all of them are going to be a lot of work. Our first teacher wants us to come up with a personal experience that we would like to have that will somehow better our lives. For example, she had to do this for one of her doctorate classes and she volunteered for one of the superintendent candidate's campaigns because she felt that she never expressed her educational/political opinions. I have no idea what to do. We have to do this, photograph it, record it and explain it by next Tuesday. I kind of don't want to take it seriously and just go to a spa or something, but I don't really have the money to do that kind of thing. And I kind of want to do something cool, but I have no idea what that would be. Oh well, I'll figure something out eventually.

April is the Coolest...

Because I got to celebrate my Birthday!I don't feel any older and I kind of keep forgetting that I am now 23 instead of 22. It was a nice birthday as my parents were out of town and it wasn't a huge deal.

In other news there are only two classes left until the end of the semester and I am panicking because I have two huge projects for one class due very soon, a group, 13 lesson, unit plan and a student observation project. Oh well.

Oh and I got to go to the zoo today with my internship classes! It was really warm and sunny today but I had a really good time.

Engagement!

Rudy and I are engaged! I decided that I should start writing everything down as I am already forgetting the individual days as this whole week has sort of mixed and blended together.

On last last Saturday at the start of Spring break Rudy and I went to a few jewelry stores and we were looking for a setting or a store to re-size an heirloom ring. We went to London Gold and to Jared and even though both places had very nice things, I fell in love with a setting at Jared. Later that week we decided to go back to Jared with his mom to look at stones. I was going to be completely happy with a small colorless diamond, but his mom kept asking to see what slightly larger diamonds looked like and they each looked more lovely than the next. I finally, was able to choose one, even though this was one of the most difficult decisions of my life! Once it was all decided they said that they would have the ring ready for pickup the next day! I was so excited and anxious and I thought that Rudy would wait to propose for a while. But his mom told him that he should not make me wait and should give it to me before he went back to school.

Friday night, we decided to get up early Saturday morning to go on a bike ride and to have a nice breakfast while the weather was super nice. But, that morning when he came in to the guestroom to wake me up, he turned on the light, said my name, and bent down on one knee. He asked me if I would marry him, and in my still mostly asleep state, I rubbed my eyes and quietly said "Yes! Of Course!"

So now he is my Fiancé! I love saying that! The Wedding is going to be a long ways off, I need to finish school and find a teaching job and He needs to finish school so I am thinking that it will be at least two and half years from now. Because of the school schedule it will have to be either spring break, summer or winter, and I am leaning towards sometime in December. Yay!

Oktober

omg. Its already the middle of October. Where did all the time go? I'm already finished with two eight week classes and I start two more this week. The first class was pretty good and talked all about Sheltered English Immersion and how to accommodate students who are still learning English. The Second class "Content Area Literacy" was excellent, the teacher was really great and I learned a lot of strategies from him.
I was a bit worried for Monday's class because of getting a new teacher and a new set of books and assignments and whatnot. I am still stressed about it. Hopefully I can learn to tolerate the teacher and complete all of the assignments he has crammed into this next 8 weeks. We have to design a unit plan. For the last 8 weeks, we were required to write one lesson plan. Now we have that same amount of time to create 6 lesson plans. I am kind of worried. And he wants us to write a blog every week that all of our classmates can see. SO I am writing in this neglected blog to try and get back into some semblance of coherent stream of conscience writing. Let me know if its working.

Hopefully Wednesday's class will be much better than Monday's.