August 2003 - Posts
I am so tired. Make that, put my feet up, watch my replayed soap when I get home tired. Today has been a long day, and I still have 40 minutes to go.
This morning, I reported to the training center as usual for Day 6 of new teacher training. However, that proved to be pretty pointless because we were supposed to be working on lesson plans, and etc... with our mentors or vocational specialists, and seeing as I have yet to meet my mentor, or my vocational specialist, and didn't have any books with me, that pretty much eliminated the ability for me to work on lesson plans home.
So I stopped by the college, visited Peter, and ran home to get a few things for my classroom, and then headed down to the high school. I will be so excited when Belkin's iTrip for the new iPod's comes out. I love listening to my iPod everywhere, even in the car, although I'm told that listening to a headphone piece of equipment in the car is not considered "safe", so the minute that I can order iTrip I will. Then I can listen to my favorite Audible books through BumbleB's (that's my car's name!) stereo. It will sure make the 20 to 40 minute drive depending on traffic to the high school seem faster.
I've been doing all sorts of little projects at the high school. The first thing on my agenda was to convince the resident tech guy to let me use my much cooler Mac (whose name is Clyde, btw!) instead of their substandard, heehee, Dell Latitude. Ok, to be fair, it's not bad, but I miss being able to save to Cd with the CD-r drive. This dell has a dvd and floppy drive, but no cd-r. Doesn't make much sense to me.
But, fortunately, he's ok with that, so as of tomorrow, if I can manage to get the pc-emulator on it, i'm going have Clyde with me, yea!
I also worked on some bulletin boards, have several more to go, and managed to tote down 17 books for my Employment Seminar Class. Boy, was that a hassle! I'm sure I made a funny picture rolling this rickety wheely chair across the second floor, to the elevator, and then across the main hall to my room. But hey, I've got my books now!
Now I'm gonna try to finish one last bulletin board, my Brag Board, then I'm heading out! I think I'm going to try and go to the local teacher's center to laminate some stuff, we'll see.
So a lot of today's new teacher (now that's new to the district, mind you, not new in general; something that has been beat into our heads over and over and over again) training seemed like a huge waste of time to me. The morning was spent at the training center where we talked about aligning our lesson plans with not just the state standards, but the assessments as well. I understand that that's important, but it seems like there should have been a better way to reinforce it with us. Instead of just talking about it over and over again.
So after the morning's session, I got an extended lunch time and returned home to find Peter very excited about the upcoming Vonage box that was soon to come in. Yep, you heard right, we are now proud Vonage subscribers. Heck at $25.99 a month, with unlimited calling in our whole state, and 500 minutes a month of calling to the rest of the U.S. and Canada, it seems like a much better deal than our other local service. So we will have to see how that works out. More on that as I continue to use it.
This afternoon was spent going over the teacher hand book for the high school. Technically, I had read it already, b/c a kind english teacher managed to get a "boot-leg" copy of it for me last week, but I sat and listened to the seminar anyway. After that, I returned to my room and started setting it up. I unpacked my new desk set, a cool purple pink set from Target, and started thinking up my lesson plans.
9 more days, not counting weekends til kids show up. Will I be ready?
Last year, I was a substitute teacher. I became a sub because a now former friend told me that it wasy easy, better money that waiting tables, and most important for me, had a flexible schedule that would work well with me finishing up school. From Sept. to early Dec. of 2002 I subbed all around, mostly in elementary schools. Then, after spending a lot of time in one charter school, I managed to get myself a "long-term" sub job. For those of you not in the know, that means a sub job where I would go to the same school, every day, and teach the same class, for a certain period of time. This first long-term job was as a Spanish teacher for grades 1-6. See the really funny thing here is that I hardly speak Spanish. But the administrators at this school spoke even less, so I guess to them I seemed like a fluent professora de espanol (probably spelled wrong, don't yell at me). Heehee.
After almost 3 months of that, two more long-terms opened up. Long story short, I took a first grade position at the same school, and taught them Writing, Spelling, Math, and Science. I also taught a really wacked out reading program to a second grade class that was next to mine. So, from March to the end of June, I was a 1st grade teacher. I really loved that. I should have started writing about my experiences then, because according to my boyfriend, some really funny things seemed to happen at this totally disorganized, oh yeah, and absolutely broke, school.
This past summer I taught summer school at that school too. All along, my big "career goal" per se was to get a job teaching an elementary level class, somewhere between grades K-4. But, my big problem is/was that I'm not a certified teacher in my state or any state. In fact the school program that I was finishing was a dual MBA in Finance and Marketing. So, needless to say, that made getting a elementary position in anything other a charter school, darn near impossible.
So I applied to a high school, as a Business Teacher. I totally never expected to hear back. Especially since I'm 21, and graduated from high school in 2000. Ok, now you know. But, and I promise you this, I'm not a total dork. I almost flunked out of high school my junior year, I just didn't feel like going to school. But, parental threats, the help of a great community college, and wonderful matriculation agreements with the business college in my state, and I managed to finish an associates degree in business marketing management, a bachelor's degree in business management, and two MBA degrees by this past summer. Not too bad I guess.
However, all those degrees weren't helping me at all. But back to the high school. They actually called back. And, I got the job. So, now I'm going to be teaching high school. Wow, imagine that. Heehee, and you know what I realized? The kids that were freshmen when I was a senior, will be seniors this year. Too weird.
I just started my new teacher training with the school this past week. I'll write more about that tomorrow.