This week was great. I was really dreading going in to the classroom this week… I think that part of it was the stress carry-over from the first 3 days of the week. However, once I got in to the classroom. It was like I was meant to be there – and life was like it should be.
Class went by so quickly this week. One minute it was the beginning of the day, the next it was already lunchtime. It continuously amazes me how little time there is in the day, and how much we have to cram in to the day as teachers. Thursday I was able to run reading stations again. It was really great for me. I realized that part of my problem with stepping up in Karen’s classroom is my struggle to be like her – to teach as she does in her classroom. What I have come to realize is that Karen and I are very similar, and very different at the same time. She is okay with me teaching in my own way within her classroom – she WANTS me to be a teacher, and she wants me to feel comfortable, and she has done such a great job at this, and I just haven’t been able to recognize this. So I ran reading stations my way – the class still got the same information out of the way I taught reading stations, and when I was finished, I heard a group of students talking about how much fun they had just had during my teaching. It made me feel so amazing!
Thursday afternoon I got to sit in on my first IEP meeting. It was a really great experience for me, especially since the mother of this student is such a powerhouse. She is very concerned about her son’s transfer from 6th grade to middle school, and that was what most of the meeting dealt with. One of her big concerns was that her son was not in Karen’s class for math. Her son Connor has been diagnosed with a form of Autism, and though he is extremely smart, he is not quite ready for Karen’s math class – her math class deals with a lot of abstract thinking, and understanding why we do what we do in math. Mrs. V really wants her son to be prepared for middle school, and she is concerned that if he is not in Karen’s math class that he will not be prepared for middle school math. It was great to listen to Karen talk to Mrs. V about her concerns about Connor in her math class, as well as the reason for placing him in the math class he is currently in. I really learned a lot. IEP meetings are long, and very involved, and as a teacher I need to be prepared, and knowledgeable about my students.
Friday, the whole school participated in the “fun run”. A fundraiser where our students ran laps around a “track” and collected money for every lap they ran from people wiling to sponsor them. It was really fun, I enjoyed giving my students a hard time, and cheering them on as well. I had a lot of fun with Connor in particular, he would come to me every lap to pick up his popsicle stick, and when he finished his 10 laps (the required amount) he was done. It made me laugh. He was so cute!
Karen had visitors in her classroom from Pacific University, they are currently in the student teaching program at PU. I DID NOT LIKE HAVING THEM IN MY CLASS. They were only there to work on some reading tests, but it still stressed me out, and it also forced me to step up my game. It made me laugh later however, thinking back on it now, I guess it was a little childish. Karen made me feel better about it that afternoon as well, by telling me that she believes I am going to be a great teacher. I told her it was very kind of her to say such things, she laughed and told me that it was not kind, but that it was just the truth. It made me smile.
This week for Daniel and I... We had to take the Zoo to the Vet. All 3 needed their 6 month check up. Both Choxie and General checked out fine. Sugarplum, she's getting on in years, and so she had to stay over night at the vet. The vet informed D and I that she does not have cancer (which is a huge relief), however we now have to buy her fancy food because she is at the beginning of having problems with her kidneys. Very sad. She has been in my life for so long I can't imagine life without her... But so dar everything is okay, and so we will be monitoring her closely. Other than that, life in the McMaster household is going swell :)
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