Long day's journey into night...

Had a very interesting week. Taught all day Monday, stayed home sick for two days, and returned to teach on Thursday. After school, my supervisor and CT both gave me my midpoint evaluation. Overall it went well. As they sat and discussed the good, bad, and the ugly of my teaching skills, I listened and looked on...responding when appropriate. What they drilled into me was that I needed to be more confident and not worry so much. And by the way, life will only get more intense during my first year of teaching so I should learn to balance it all now. Then I'm told to it this way and then that way and this other way, but be sure to develop my own style. Don't stress out though. Ooooh the irony. The great thing about having your own classroom is that you pretty much call the shots and you don't coursework such as work samples and action research papers hanging over your head. AND you don't have professors cooperating teachers watching your every move like a hawk.

So I went home Thursday night and had to punch out two complete lesson plans and develop a prewriting worksheet due to a last-minute schedule change. At about 12:30 am, I felt pretty good about what I had produced. I came to school tired, but feeling peppy. I sailed through the opening activity with enthusiasm and even began reading that way. Then my CT's moodiness kicked in. He continued to be prickly throughout the day about every little thing, not realizing that HE was a the major reason for my rapidly fraying nerves as I tried to teach. It didn't help that my professor was 20 minutes late for the writing lesson he was supposed to observe. He caught the last 5 minutes or so and then caught a crazy day of math.

We were playing a game and though it began well, it ended poorly. Unfortunately, I didn't plan out certain aspects as well as I should have (it's all in the details with first graders),so they got quite squirrelly and chatty. It also didn't help that today was Friday and they had fundraising activity called Jump Rope for Heart. At the end of the day, they were gonna jump rope in teams in the gym. They were super-excited for this and it was all they could think about. My CT was climbing the walls and his face was turning red whenever the kids weren't acting just so. I think I'm just way more go-with-the-flow on offbeat days like this, where he prefers to maintain order at all times. My CT didn't want to release me from teaching to debrief with my prof, so we he left me some written comments and promised to catch up with me later by phone. Don't know when though. At least the kids and I had a blast in the gym as they jumproped for an hour by day's end. They were so tired out, but with the adrenaline flowing. It was a great way to end the week.

So my CT ends the day with the prophetic announcement that he needed to talk to me about math class and I wasn't gonna like it. Since there were some kids still present, I asked if we could wait until they had at least left. He realized this and agreed to wait. The proceeded to go into grave detail about several little things he noticed that had been going wrong the last couple of days. He felt the children had been walking all over me. I was in partial agreement on that assessment. I had been out two days to battle bronchitis and am still not feeling up to snuff. I listened and felt that he was at last tactfully critiquing me and offering things to to try to fix the situation.

That's what I had been needing from him. It's fine to tell me to work on this or that, but at least give me some tools to work with since he knows more than I do about teaching. Up to this point, he had been using a tough love approach. That was fine in some instances, but not as his entire mentoring style. If you've read any of my previous blogs, this journey has been a long, stressful one. In the end, we came to better understand one another. I was able to share some things that had been on my mind and he responded pretty well. I still expect some days to be challenging, but at least now I feel more at ease. He even knows now that he is kind of my Sgt. Foley (see An Officer and a Gentleman) and laughed at the reference.

We got a babysitter and Hubby took me out for dinner at McCormick & Schmick's. I had Idaho Rainbow Trout and clam chowder. Hubby21 had a $25 coupon, so that saved us some money. Then to stretch out legs a bit and prolong the evening a bit, we walked around the outdoor plaza. We each got a gelato for dessert. Mine was chocolat and oh did it hit the spot. My first gelato ever too.

Afterwards, we came home and found the kids watching Cars. Hubby and N sat together in his chair, while K and I sat together to finish the movie. It was really a wonderful way to end the week. Got to watch Mater "get 'r done!" It capped a very rollercoaster week with just some quiet, and long overdue family time. Woke up this morning and realized I had Stepford kids...that is, they decided to act like robots in voice, movement, and everything else. Very cute actually.

Well, that concludes our program. Stay tuned next time for the ongoing saga of K's potty training. Just wait and see what comes out! Literally!