All we can do...

I have been a slacker on my updates but life has been crazy busy! I am now into my 9^th week as a real (intern) teacher! It has been so much fun and so crazy busy! My students are the cutest and I am going to miss them while we are off but I am also so ready to take a break! They are too… More on that later!

I have 28 little cuties and they are great! We have had some fun with our read aloud’s and we are currently reading the Wayside School series. My students thought it would be fun to put their name in for the actual character in the story so each day we read a new story about a kid in our class ;) They love it! I got to thinking… ‘I haven’t been on my blog much and I can’t use students names but, what if I use the wayside names instead???’ so that is what I shall do! Starting with my crazy day… By the end of the day I was ready to say goodbye for three weeks (sad thing is it is only Tuesday…)

Things were a little crazy in the morning… the students are ready to go on a break and I don’t blame them. But nothing really happened until after lunch. I was in the room talking to my facilitator (In a sense my mentor teacher) when one of my students, Eric Bacon, came in with broken glasses. My facilitator (Amazing woman she is) was able to help him but they had to go to the main office to find a small screwdriver.

Meanwhile… back in the classroom students were returning to class. Eric Fry comes in balling, full on tears! I tried to calm him down all the while students are everywhere trying to get my attention (That’s just what happens). I finally calm him enough to speak and what does he say???

Eric Fry: Eric Bacon was kidnapped! He didn’t come in from recess

Me (thinking that he was still in the office): It’s okay he came in to talk to me.

Eric Fry: No, he walked past the office and someone took him.

Me (seeing there was no way to calm this child): Okay come with me.

**We started walking to the office where we see none other then Eric Bacon**

Eric Bacon: Miss Fiso, the principal wants to see Joy.

Me: Umm okay (by now we were back to class) Joy, will you come here a second, the principal needs to talk to you.

**Start my read aloud with the students**

Intercom: Miss Fiso, we need Allison to come down to the office.

Me: Okay, Allison you can head on down to the office.

**Continue reading**

Principal: Miss Fiso, I’m sorry to interrupt but I need to talk to your class… (Apparently my class was responsible for creating a rumor, it spread to first grade, that there was a kidnapper, with a gun going around the school looking for kids to steal… In reality it was someone’s grandpa who needed to use the restroom.)

Sidenote: I had to send 3 of my boys down to the principal’s office yesterday because they were fighting. The week can only get better, right???

I really do have an amazing class! They are marvelous. In fact, I told another teacher what happened and she responded with a shocked face “Your class?” See the little cuties are usually so good… They are just ready for a break… I don’t blame them!

Teaching

Life gets interesting when you are spending most of your time with third graders... Conversation that I had after stating that we would be getting a new student Tuesday:

S1: Miss Fiso, is it your daughter!?
Me: Ummm... No, I don't have a daughter and if I did she would not be old enough to join you for school!
S2: Miss Fiso do you have a baby?
S3: No, she's not married
S4: Why are you not married?
S3: She's only 22!
S5: My mom got married when she was 19.
S6: Don't worry Miss Fiso, my aunt isn't married and she is almost 40.
Me: I think we should move on to something other than my marital status... Let's maybe talk about why you all are calling out? ;)

Life these days... Crazy but good! I love my class and the people I work with, I could do without the double duty of teacher and student but I'm starting to get the hang of it!

First week

This week was kind of insane trying to get everything worked out but I love my class! On Fridays I have the students turn in their journals to me so that I can make sure they have been writing in them. I had some exciting entries. "Third grade should be called fun grade" "Miss Fiso has made it on to my pretty and nice list of teachers" ha! They are great! I have also received plenty of pictures and notes from my students as well. But my favorite is the stories they have written me as writing assignments. One assignment was a trick story... One girl wrote about a time she tricked her brother "It was so funny I lafed my head off. Well my head didn't go off"

I am so excited to actually be teaching but things are so busy and I feel like there is not enough time for everything that I need to do. I'm sure I will eventually get it figured out but until then...

Do all the things!

This internship has been the greatest thing but it has also kept me incredibly busy. We started Thursday and since then things have been nonstop! I love my students each one of them has their own great personality and they are so sweet to me... Friday morning was the parent morning. Parents scare me, even though they were all really kind. I had the worst case of nerves meeting the parents. I would much rather do the first day of school again and again. In case you were wondering, a teacher really can never finish all of their work (although it might be harder for me to be an intern because so much more is expected of me). I am supposed to put in a record of an evaluation for EVERY lesson I teach! Do you know how many lessons are taught in a day!? Needless to say, I have a lot of catching up as far as my record keeping goes...

Also, I felt like pictures so here you are:

My classroom job chart (don't you love all the colors?) and bookshelf 

My calendar, birthday chart, and sound board (it tells the students how loud they can be)

My mess, I still don't have everything organized. But I really don't have a place to put everything because....

The classroom belongs to another, see all her stuff in this corner... 

... and this corner? It is also in all the cabinets. In other words, I have no space for anything!

A view of my desk that I never use and the table that I constantly congregate to with all of my clutter.

Also, this is the only picture I took of myself the first week of the internship.
See that excitement!? I'm a teacher now!!!

One more... Isn't this video the cutest? (They are at school so I feel justified sharing it).

Five days!!!

School is coming so quickly and each day I get more excited about this upcoming year. Not too long ago I sent out a letter to my students and their parents telling them how excited I was to meet them and also giving them an assignment of sorts. I asked the parents to write to me about their children to help me get to know them. To include their likes and dislikes about school and their hobbies. I have been getting back responses (one girl even wrote me herself) and I am so excited to meet my class!

2 Weeks!

It has been a while but I am going to start using this blog again as I begin my first year of teaching (well my internship). I will be teaching third grade and I am so excited! I haven't been able to get into my classroom yet and won't be able to get in until the end of next week... Did I mention that school starts on the 25th!?

Today I spent a lot of time shopping for my classroom which is both good and bad! I found some good sales and I was able to use my teacher discount, but seeing as how I don't have access to my classroom yet all of my stuff it taking up space in my bedroom...

I am doing a rock star theme this year and I was struggling to find name plates that would fit my theme. I finally decided to just make them myself, I am quite proud of how they turned out. I am thinking that I will laminate them, that way I can re-use them if I decide to keep the rock star theme. I think they are pretty cute, what do you think?

You can't see it so well but there are 5 colors (Blue, Yellow, Purple, Pink, and Orange)

And for your viewing enjoyment... I am loving this cover at the moment.

Sub Day... Take 2!

So I woke up this morning and started getting ready when I got a text message from my mentor teacher "Hey, I'm not feeling too well so I'm taking a sick day. Would you like me to write sub plans for you or the sub?" (As I am not an official substitute I am not allowed to be there with the kids without a paid sub in the room) I decided that I would give it a try and so the sub plans were sent to me. The day started off well enough but due to unforeseen difficulties (Our class in charge of lunch workers) there was quite a bit of confusion during the late morning time... I finally gave up and we moved on to bigger and better (or just more educational) things. I started teaching my capacity math lesson. It went well. The students were able to figure out the conversions and when they struggled they were able to talk to their neighbor to figure it out. One of my biggest struggles with Math in the school is how much the students need to understand. I would love it if they could figure out why the formulas work or even ask specific questions to help them understand. But that is not the way the students learn math so trying to change their ideas in less than a month is extremely difficult!
Later on in the day I met with my guided reading group. We are getting to a great part of the book so it was interesting to see what they think about the book so far and to see how they are connecting the ideas in the book.  After guided reading we did Art. We talked about Georgia O'Keefe and then imitated one of her paintings using watercolors. It was a lot of fun and the students put a lot of work into it. After Art we talked about Haiku's and created a few traditional Haiku's. After Writing the students split up and went to reteach sections for math. The group I got seemed to understand the straight conversions but struggled with story problems that had multiple steps. It was hard for them to break things down in order to solve the equations.

... And that was my second sub day. It was crazy at times. Let's just hope that I have more control over the class when they are my own class (I'm sure that will be the case but who knows!).

**A little bit of humor but there is some bad language... Just a warning**