beyond the green

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.

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It’s getting to the point in the semester where seniors are starting to panic a bit over what they’ll be doing after graduation. Many of us have found jobs and/or housing for the summer, and some have found both for the fall as well. Quite a few of us will be entering voluntary service of some sort in the fall, while others are getting married or starting careers. Among my modmates, two are getting married, two have plans for further education in the fall, another has a teaching job lined up, and the rest are continuing their search for employment. I just finalized my plans to move to Oakland, California in the fall to join a Catholic Worker house that works with Latin American immigrants and homeless, so I’m feeling significantly less stress today than I was yesterday!

It’s also the point in the semester when we realize that we’re leaving Bethel. Many of us are ready and can’t wait to walk across the stage. Some, like me, are feeling nostalgic about the last four years, and aren’t quite ready to make the transition. But, ready or not, in two-and-a-half weeks, it will be here. Now we just have a multitude of papers, recitals, concerts, seminars, projects, exams, and finals to squeeze in before that day!

One of Bethel’s most active clubs, Student Alumni Association (SAA), puts on a Grandparents Day open to any grandparents of students. Students provide SAA with the addresses of grandparents and SAA sends out invitations. Grandparents come from all across the area and even from out of state to spend the day learning about what their grandchildren do.

After registering in the morning, grandparents are treated to a sampler of student performances. Then they join their grandchildren for convocation, lunch and possibly afternoon classes.

My grandparents are unusual in the fact that all four of their grandchildren go to Bethel. As an added bonus they are also Bethel grads themselves and huge fans of everything Bethel.

Grandparents day is an important way for students to connect with their grandparents and for grandparents to learn about the college.

Spring brings on many stresses with projects, concerts, seminars and finals looming on the horizon, but one week has all sorts of fun activities as well. Spring Fling week consists of various fun activities like a water fight, an Iron Chef competition, powderpuff football, a movie awards competition and last but definitely not least, Mudslam.

Mudslam is a mud volleyball tournament open to all students, faculty, staff and alumni. Teams of 8 with 6 playing at a time face off in the mud pit. With 28 teams this year, the tournament took most of the afternoon on Sunday. There is always a make-up date in case of rain or extreme cold, but we played in some pretty cold weather this year.

Since a major portion of campus participates, the emphasis is less on athletic ability and more on having fun getting very dirty. The mud proves difficult to have an actual game happen. The winners get a 50 dollar Pizza Hut gift card for winning, so there is an incentive to play well.

It’s Senior Seminar Season!!  That wonderful time of the year when the campus community is invited to a variety of presentations with titles such as:

• Personality and Perspective: The Effects of Having a Sibling with a Disability
• Branding in Higher Education and Its Effective Application in Television Advertisement: A Bethel College Case Study
• A simple analysis of trends in giving
• Erasure: a process of creation through destruction
• Revision and the Writing Workshop: Editing Our Selves as Therapy
• The Effectiveness of Retrofit Wall Insulation Using a Bethel College Dormitory as an Example
• Peace or Persecution? Mennonites in the Holocaust
• The Panama Canal and the United States-Panamanian Relations It Created
• The Use of Morpholino Oligos in the Controlled Gene Expression of Prion Protein (PrP-1) in Danio rerio
• 2D Video Game Landscaping: From Generation to on-the-fly Isometrism
• Gathering ‘Round to Vision the Future: A Closer Look at Western District Conference and South Central Conference’s Reactions to the Gather ‘Round Sunday School Curriculum and the Next Denominational Curriculum

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