Diary of a Student Teacher Part 3: A Week of My Life

The week of April 16-20 was absolutely crazy!  This was the third week of my “block” which means I am responsible for the entire day totally on my own.  I have done the lesson planning and am supposed to carry out the week from beginning to end.  The first two weeks of my block went very well and I feel comfortable in the classroom with my students.  I really have the confidence necessary for me to teach next year!  Whoo-hoo!  The first two weeks were pretty tiring though, and I know I need to start getting more sleep.  There’s just always so much to do what with lesson planning, prep, or grading to do after school plus working on the KPTP (Kansas Professional Teaching Portfolio, required by the State Department of Education for a teaching license), and don’t even get me started on how far behind schedule I am on wedding planning and shower thank you notes.  There are just not enough hours in the day!

Some of the craziness of this week included an observation by my building’s principal.  I found that I wasn’t nearly as nervous to have him in the classroom as I thought I would.  I really appreciated the fact that he took the time to spend half an hour watching me teach and then 15 minutes the next day to visit about what he had seen and how I can become a better and more effective teacher.  He used the same form and structure for his observation as he does with his yearly review of teachers, so I feel like when it comes time for my first observation next year in my own classroom.

Another crazy part of my week was having an unannounced visit and observation by my Bethel professor.  That really stopped me in my tracks and I had a moment (ok, about a full minute) of shear panic.  I had no warning that he was coming, the morning was going a little rough since the class was super talkative and we were having a wee bit of trouble moving through the work I had planned out for the day.  So, at the point he arrived, we were moving on to part of the Math lesson that I had just decided to do totally different than I had planned and prepped because of the time, and I had no idea how it was going to go.  It ended up going just fine, but I was inwardly freaking out the entire time!

Other highlights of my week were a 2nd interview in a school district that seems absolutely amazing.  The community feel and the work they are doing with MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) really get me excited about potentially working there.  I also had an initial interview with a great church that is looking for someone in children’s ministry (my dream job that I thought I would look for after getting some classroom teaching experience).  I also had to turn down an interview offer that would take me out to western Kansas where there wouldn’t be a job for my (then) husband.  I also submitted a version of my senior seminar project for publication by Mennonite Life, and finished the rough draft of my KPTP.  Whew, what a week!