Alright. I spent the last 8 weeks student-teaching in a high school. I thought it would be unprofessional to write about it until I was done. Well, today was my last day, so now you get to hear all the hair-ripping-out details:) yay!

To begin with, my cooperating teacher didn't feel the need to teach me anything. She instead felt that the "sink or swim," "trial and error" approach was better. So I would create all the materials and lessons plans by myself (which is incredibly time-consuming when you have nothing to start with). Then, she would tell me all of the things I was doing wrong and I would redo the entire thing...over and over and over.

This school had a lot of tough and troubled students, too. Some were under house-arrest, pregnant, dealing drugs, and gang members. Since they had so many problems, many of them had absolutely no interest in school (which I completely understand). Everything turned into classroom management issues! I had to go through all of my past readings and create my own classroom management strategy -poof!- out of nowhere, since the teacher didn't give me much advice.

The most horrible part of the placement, though, was the fact that she wouldn't tell me I was doing things "wrong" for about a week after I started doing it. When I sat on a desk one Monday and she apparently saw my underwear, she emailed my graduate school advisor that I was "flashing students." OMG! She didn't tell me until a week later that my advisor might think that I'm a pervert/unfit to teach. So I had to clean up that mess...and that kind of thing happened two more times. Finally, all of the head professors of my grad program met with me to discuss her concerns with my teaching. I was sooo scared that they would grill me and kick me out of the program (at that time I thought that maybe my cooperating teacher was right, maybe I was a miserable teacher). But once I had explained everything, they completely agreed with me! Yay and haha (sorry, but I have some built up spite);)!! So today I was respectful, but I got out of there as soon as I could. I feel like having a party!

Reasons for a party:
No more daily interactions with people who could ruin my career by making up scandalous lies about me!
My classes at the U will start at 1:25pm everyday until May!
I'm 23 tomorrow!
I have 3 weeks of vacation in the next two months!
I'm going to Camp Snoopy with my all my MN relatives tomorrow!
I bought myself a Tibetan aquamarine ring for my birthday!
Okay, I'm running out of extremely exciting things...whew. :)

I'm so excited for March- happy spring everyone