Student Teaching: 6th/5th Grade!!

I have been meaning to write a new post about student teaching for the past little while, but I have not had the chance..because I am just too stinkin' busy (which I love by the way)! But I just transitioned this week to the 5th grade classroom that I was supposed to originally be in, which has been great by the way..more about that later though.

Well my first week was wonderful (besides getting the flu the 3rd day..yuck). Yes, January 4th was a beautiful day, and meeting my cooperating teaching, Mrs. Brecht, was miraculous. I knew right away that I was going to learn so much from her, and that there was a purpose for me being in her class. And folks, there definitely was a reason.

Let me just tell you a little story about myself. I am a perfectionist, and figured out that I am especially a perfectionist when it comes to teaching. Good thing? Not really. Last semester, I realized that with every lesson I taught, I tried to make it just so, and I would try to follow my lesson plans so perfectly, that I would not enjoy myself, and I really was not having much fun. I literally don't think I smiled very often, and I think my little 3rd graders began to really take my last name seriously. haha. Just kidding. But yes, that was a goal of mine to work on relaxing a little and bringing my contagious sweet little hilarious self into my teaching...and SMILE. You wouldn't think that smiling in the classroom would be my downfall, but you would be thinking wrong. So, to make a long story a little bit shorter, my cooperating teacher for 6th grade showed me that humor is so crucial in the classroom, and I completely loosened up with those kids, and I really had a great time. It was a blast working with Mrs. Brecht and her students. They really helped me, and therefore, I was able to teach some really fun lessons!

5th grade has been marvelous so far! I wasn't sure about being in this classroom though, because my new cooperating teacher, Mrs. Williams, seemed completely different....like way organized, and way structured, and I was thinking.."How am I going to meet up to her standards?" It made me a little nervous. But I went in on Monday, and we started planning the week, and she was so easy to talk to, and she even took me out for lunch. She is so great and a really amazing teacher. She is so respectful of anything that I want to do for my lessons, and she is just really supportive, which I love. What a great experience this has been so far! Completely different than I thought it was going to be. The students in her class are great too. I also was a little skeptical about how they were going to be compared to Mrs. Brecht's class. I connected so well with the 6th grade, and so it made me feel like I wasn't going to connect with a different class. I was wrong. They challenged me to get all of their names down by the end of the day, and learn one thing about them, and then they would quiz me about them the next day. The little rascals didn't have faith in me, but I dominated those names like there was no tomorrow!

So far so good, and only 8 more weeks left of this blessed experience! Hoorah!! I am one-fourth of the way there kids, so hold on to your britches, and thanks for all of the support!! Yay, and I am going to Rexburg tomorrow as a little side-note...which will be exceptionally fun! I will get to see my little angel friends, and finally I will be able to laugh once more! Bring your funny girls and boys!!! Love it!!!!!!

One thing I do know....

One thing that I do know...is that I love being home. "Home is where the heart is" or so I have heard. I think I have heard correctly. Not only do I love being home..sometimes not realizing it at the time...but I love being home where I can sleep in my own, amazingly comfortable bed, clean my own bedroom until it is so clean that I literally could eat off of the floor and be ok with it, know where everything in the kitchen is so that I don't just have to have a glass of milk for breakfast and an orange for lunch because that is all I could find (haha), hear my neices and nephews come over and run up the stairs to my bedroom and barge in without even knocking just because they love me, go into my grandpa's room even for a minute and have him tell me a story, have my dad ask me to help him move the furniture for the hundredth time because I have huge muscles, be able to fit all of my clothes in my closet plus some, listen to my dogs bark until it seems like they couldn't possibly bark any more but they still do, see pictures of my own family members hanging on the walls, have friends come over and take ridiculous pictures of ourselves and talk and talk until all hours of the night, relax and make memories, but most of all...BECAUSE IT'S HOME!! Someday, I will have my own home and family that I can share those experiences with....and they will someday be as appreciative of their home as I am of mine now...because home is where the heart is. I know that for sure.