Life continues.....to be amazing!

So....I'm a hypocrite.

I complain about friends abroad not blogging often enough, but I, on the other hand, blog even less than them. I suppose I forget that news from here is probably just as welcome to them as news from abroad is to me. So I'll share the road life is taking me on right now:

Student teaching is phenomenal (which I let everyone know whenever I talk to them). Yes, there are frustrating days when the students annoy me so much I want to throw things at them, and I can only sigh and say, "We're just not having a good day, are we?" To which they'll vehemently deny and say it's a great day. Right. It's great that I want to pound your head on the desk until I get through to you without having to repeat instructions 500 times.

Besides those days, it's a tremendous joy to have students excitedly walk in the room and banter with me about not doing any work and can we please have a free day? Most exciting recently was that I decided to do a Comic Life project with my students. This is something I have looked forward to all year, and was something I was determined to do. (Dennis, it's nice to have the CTLT around for these sorts of things) I borrowed laptops and digital cameras from the CTLT (told my teacher I have the hookup), and had students storyboard, take pictures, and create a comic alternate ending to Of Mice and Men. Not to brag, but they LOVED the project. I can't tell you how many students told me it was the best project ever after they complained the first day, "This is NOT cool, Mrs. E, WHY do we have to write an alternate ending?" The rest of the time all I heard was, "Mrs. E, this is the best project ever!" "Mrs. E, we were talking about this project at lunch and how we couldn't wait to work on it." Yeah, that's right....juniors excited about a school project. I win.

Along with Perspectives, I'm now teaching AP for the month of November. This is providing a much bigger challenge instruction-wise. I spend a lot more time planning for the class, and I need to be sure it's relevant, rigorous, and something that's interesting. This week I'm starting an advertising analysis project that I think will be really interesting, challenging, and a great way for students to work on analysis skills. I could share stories about my first week with AP, but it might just frustrate me, and I may sound bitter, so I'll refrain. I do enjoy the challenge, however, and I'm excited to get to know these students as well as I know my Perspectives students.

In other happy news: a woman in the English Department gave verbal notice that she's retiring this year, so that means a position will be open next fall for my dream job. She's also vying for me to replace her, which would be amazing. She may even put in a good word for me to the principal, which would be even amazing-er. Chaz and I still don't know what we're doing next year. We keep putting off talking about it, saying that we have plenty of time. However, my student teaching is almost over (difficult to believe), so we should at least talk about it. We want to travel and teach abroad so much, but at the same time, this is my dream job that is opening up, so maybe we should take that for a year or two, let me get experience, and then travel. BUT the longer we put off traveling, the more unlikely that it will happen. We just have a lot to mull over in the next few months. Once again, I'll put off discussion of that issue.

So yes, life continues...