Reflections of a New Teacher

These are my reflections beginning from my first few days as a student teacher and on...

Friday, August 25, 2006

Completely Freaking Out...

Sunday, August 13, 2006

And thus begins the semester... a little earlier than I thought.

There is a mandatory meeting for all student teachers on August 17... so it'll be cool to be out of town until midnight on the 16th, right? Heh. Funny. Well, I've been freaking out... the same day that a certain camper decides to disown me (and treat me terribly) I get about a million e-mails telling me that I've got a million things to do for student teaching before the semester even starts... aaand I have to go in to school earlier than I thought. Eek! I don't even know what student teaching entails so I'm practically having an anxiety attack but more on that later. School officially starts the 24th, and that's the day that my contract says I start... but now I'm being encouraged to be in the classroom getting ready... now. And I'm in Maine. That doesn't really work... I had been told, or at least had it in my head, that I needed to come in "a few days before school starts". A few days meaning a week? I guess I just didn't really understand exactly how this whole thing was going to work. It just is nice to have a little more time to mentally prepare. That's huge for me.

Sooo it's off the plane at midnight Wednesday (after driving all day from Maine to New York), all day meeting 8-5 on Thursday back in CO, all day at school Friday getting ready... then a running start from there starting with a 7:30am meeting Monday and more meetings and preparation the rest of the week until school starts. Whew... talk about hitting the ground running! I guess it will keep me busy and give me less time to be nervous. So maybe that's a good thing. Oh well, I mean, who needs to unpack and do laundry anyway?

Okay, I know that this schedule I've created for myself is not ideal. But hey, it's not exactly like I purposefully cut vacation so close to the beginning of the semester... I would have gone in July had it been up to me BUT it was a friend who invited us to come to this cabin in Maine and this is the week they had it booked so it was either a yes or a no. Of course we wanted to come... these are my boyfriend's best friends in the world and he is SO happy when he gets to see them! And I love them too. So it works out. But booo hooo we have to leave early since the reservation for the cabin was for all week, not just four days. The midnight flight on a Wednesday was the cheapest so that aided in my decision for cutting it so close... but hopefully it will work out.

Anyway, with all of the emails I was being bombarded with, I started completely freaking out... hence the title. As much as I love my boyfriend he just didn't understand... so in my moment of panic I sent an e-mail to my cooperating teacher. Poor thing having to read it, haha. I think the following passage from that e-mail sums up my feelings from the day:

"Okay, I've got to admit, I'm very stressed and nervous about the whole thing even though I'm trying really hard not to be. I think a lot of it is just the lack of time to mentally prepare for what exactly student teaching will entail. I mean, really, I'm glad that the school of ed gave us the summer to keep our brains free, but in thepast two-three days I've just been BOMBARDED with emails with attachments of everything you can think of, trying to wade through the piles and read through it all (on vacation) and wishing I'd had the summer to mentally chew on everything. And yet… I still don'treally know what's going to be expected of me entirely since apparently they're going to clue us in during that big meeting on the17th. I mean… really? We don't get to know anything until right before we start? It just seems like so much crammed into so littletime… even just a packet in May to look over about their requirements for the student teaching work sample (which by the way I still don'thave) would have been great. OH! And I STILL don't know who my university supervisor is going to be OR when my seminar meeting times will be! So much for planning. Oy. At least for regular classes your instructor and meeting time are actually listed."

Hopefully I'll feel better soon. It's just so much all at once... it's very overwhelming. Here's to the last few days of summer vacation... floating on a lake and s'mores... mmm...

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