Well, a few exciting tidbits of news!! Firstly, my Practicum has gotten off to a roaring start. I successfully woke up on Monday morning, and had a fun morning of observing my cooperative teacher run the classroom. I was impressed by the lack of explicit classroom-management type things she had to do. The kids just kind of came in and knew what they were supposed to do. For the most part, they are all pretty well-behaved. After that late night and early morning on Monday, you would think I would have rested up last night, right? No. A couple of my friends were in town for the night, so we stopped by one of the shadiest bars in South Bend (Club 23). It was a fun night; I was completely under control, but I didn't get back to my room till 3.
After two short nights in a row, I was struggling pretty hard to stay awake during the first class this morning. I freaked out when, between classes today, my cooperative teacher asked me how much of the second class period I felt comfortable taking over. Not being one to shy away from much, I taught the entire second class. It was pretty good - I basically did the exact same thing she had done. In explaining one thing in the way that I thought she had, though, I apparently did a better job of it, because she commented later that it was a really good idea to present it that way. Tomorrow we are planning to do the same thing - she'll do the first class and I'll do the second. I think by the end of the week, I'll slowly start doing more of the first class.
My teacher is awesome - she is absolutely willing to let me do what I want ("It's your experience, so just tell me to get out of your way if you don't want me interrupting you.") I obviously told her that it's her classroom and that she can feel free to interrupt at will. The one thing that I had trouble with today was a little classroom management point. You aren't supposed to talk over kids. Having the loud voice that I do, I just kind of assume I can easily talk over quiet side conversations. She had to stop me twice today to quiet some kids. I basically just need to work on realizing that those conversations are going on and taking the time out to stop them.
The other bit of good news came tonight. Each ACEr has a mentor teacher in his/her school. Mine happens to be the Vice Principal of Heart of Mary, and she is up here this week for the mentor teacher workshop. I met her tonight at mass and talked with her for a while afterwards. Apparently there are some staffing changes going on and they haven't quite been able to fill everything quite like they want. Anyway, to spare the details, it looks like I'll be teaching all the social studies, no religion, and at least a math class or two. Depending on how many math classes they have me teach, I may also teach a "practical what you need to know to survive in the real world" class. The goal of that class would be to get guest speakers from different career fields, teach the students how to fill out a job application, how to write a check and balance a checkbook, etc. Also, she said the basketball coaching job will almost certainly be open, and she was excited that I expressed interest in taking that on. She also mentioned that Sister Nancy (the Principal) has some other things cooking for me. I don't really know what that can mean since it looks like I'll be pretty busy already.
In other news, I have a lot of work to do this week. My first lesson plan is due Friday. The goal of the ACE classes in the first summer is to send us off with one class roughly planned for the year (not completely lesson planned, but at least unit objectives, course objectives...all the broad things to be filled in on the fly with lesson plans). I have been struggling with which course to work on. Civics because that's what I'm most enthusiastic about (and will therefore probably write better plans and have better ideas) or world history, which I don't know as much about and am not as pumped for (since a head start in that class will probably be much appreciated). As I type this post, I have my world history book open to the Alabama Standards pages at the front. I think I'm going to go with this one, which means I need to get my brain in gear for this.
Sorry for the long post. I've had a whirlwind couple of days, and the rest of the week looks to be pretty exciting too.
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