Kate's Eye View

Student teaching is going OK. I have been teaching 4th and 6th periods since my last posting. I have a good relationship with both of those classes but 1st and 3rd are another story. I lead all four classes on Monday and it went well with all but 3rd period. They pretty much look at me like “Why are you telling what to do? You’re not my teacher”. I think that class is going to be a struggle. Thursday, I think there was some damage done to my working relationship with the 6th period class. They are, for the most part, really good students and they get their stuff done. However, there is a group of students who are very outgoing and very loud--all of the time. And I know for a fact that they distract other students in the class. So, Wednesday we moved out about half of the tables from the room and rearranged students so that they can sit around the edges of the room and at tables in the middle of the room. It gives us much more room to move around the room. So, when we made the ...

Friday was my first day teaching the class by myself. I was really expecting to get quite nervous but I didn't and everything went fairly well! From here on out 4th and 6th periods are mine and I will be adding 3rd and 1st a little later. 4th period went well in its own ways. I didn't have any management issues and the students seemed excited about the change. I started the class with a think-pair-share activity. They are not used to this sort of thing so I gave them a lot of time, but I think I gave the too much because I discovered that they weren't going very deep with the questions I presented to them. If I continue doing this they will get better. So 6th period I didn't give them as much time on this portion of the class. 4th period I ran all of the way to the bell and they didn't have much of a chance to do the worksheet or book questions, whereas 6th period had about 10 minuets to work on them, but because it was 6th period on a Friday they weren...

After Jeremy's visit this weekend (more on that later) it occurred to me that Jeremy and I know where to eat in Tucson! For anyone who is living in or visiting Tucson here is a pretty good list of tried-and-true restaurants! Enjoy! Mexican: Guadalajara Grill Molinito’s St. Mary’s Restaurant La Salsa Chipotle Italian: Macaroni Grill Olive Garden Ethiopian: Zemam’s Indian: Sher-E-Punjab Chinese: Guilin Chinese Buffet: China Star Thai: Villa Thai Sushi: Sushi Hama Gourmet: Pastiche Jonathan’s Cork Feast Pizza: Magpie’s Rosati’s Zachary’s Mama’s 1702 Breakfast: Blue Willow Millie’s Pancake Haus IHOP The Good Egg Coffee Shop: Le Buzz Coffee Pointe Ike’s Coffee and Tea Dessert: Melting Pot Oregano’s

Today I thought instead of summarizing my student teaching experience I would share about the two main projects that took up most of my time this summer while I was in Littleton before I came back to Tucson. The first one started because I wanted to make sure to have something to occupy my time while on the cruise we took with Jeremy's mom and brothers at the beginning of June. I have always liked to cross-stitch and so I went to Michael's and picked one out that I thought I could frame and hang on the wall when I was done. I picked on called "Tucsan View" and it sort of falls in line with the Italian theme I have going on in the kitchen. I think when I am done this will go in the dining room though. I actually didn't get many chances to work on while on the cruise but I did work on it over the summer and have been picking up when I find the time here in Tucson. Today I took the first pictures of where I am at with this. It might be hard to tell because it th...

This week has been pretty good at the school. I have been interacting with students more both helping to answer questions and enforcing rules. The class with the most questions was Earth Science unfortunately because I will not be actually teaching that class later in the semester. There were two major times that I had to ask students to behave. One, a student returned from the restroom and my mentor teacher had stepped out and this student went to a friend instead of his chair, so I told him to go to his seat. The other example was when two guys were gradually getting louder and then horsing around and I walked up to them and asked them to sit down and explained that they were being very loud and distracting other students. They sat. I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday grading all of the Biology homework that they had turned in from the first week of school. I spent today grading Earth Science. Today the students did their first lab activity with microscopes. It went wel...

I found out this afternoon that my grandma passed away today. It was unexpected because she didn’t have cancer or anything, just an old woman’s heart. I don’t know why she died, all we know is that she was found on her floor. Very sad. She is the only grandma I had because my mom’s mom was never a part of my life. Now that I know she is gone it of course it makes me think about all sentimental moments in my relationship with her. We were not as close as a lot of granddaughters and grandmothers, but we were close enough. I remember going to her house over the holidays and reading The Night Before Christmas every year and doing puzzles. I remember planting watermelon seeds in her back yard and coming back to see the sprouts. After my family moved away from California I saw her much less so most of my memories of her and I are from before I was ten. Even though I lived far away, she was always wonderful about sending birthday cards and cards for no reason. Last week in fact she...

I have survived the first two days of school with students there! Yay! My first impressions of the students are that on the whole they seem well behaved and respectful. There were only two minor incidences where students tried to challenge my mentor teacher as she was explaining the rules and such on the first day. She handled it well and did not argue with them. She told me that she had a very hard time with classroom management when she was in her first year of teaching. After that, she went back and took some classes on it and today she doesn’t have much of any problems with students because she has figured out her own style and discovered what works best for her. I do anticipate that this will be an area that I will struggle with. I think that I will have to remember that it is more important to maintain order in the classroom than to seem cool to students or to give them too much power. I didn’t actually interact much with the students today or yesterday, but I really tried...