Sweetest things.

Since my life and every ounce of my time currently belongs to MCHS I have a list instead of a real life post. Since some of life still needs to be documented especially the really sweet things:
- Mark dug the car out of the snow for me yesterday. He also warms it up every morning. That man. He's swell.
- Coming home to hot cocoa after a particularly long Monday.
- The student who told me that she loves the way I teach.
- Mark making dinner AND doing dishes while I sit in the spare room typing out lesson plans.
- Family members who ordered birthday presents for me from Spain.
- Our nightly activity of Lego Harry Potter, except when Mark hits me with a spell, then I get annoyed.
- University Supervisors who are really nice when your government class was a little chaotic during your observation.
Now back to lesson planning.

Surviving.

So to say this last week and a half has been a breeze would really be a load of crap. I am loving student teaching, don't get me wrong. But the whole working after teaching....kind of sucks. It doesn't help that I've got senioritis way bad and just want to be done working a job that doesn't include teaching English.
My kids are pretty great to far. No one is throwing things at me or tying me up, so I consider it a success. I confiscated a cell phone the other day, and it made me feel powerful and also very old. My mom said that I was being mean, but I have to be strict so that they don't walk all over me right?
So far I am surviving, and loving it. This has brought me WAY outside my comfort zone, but at the same time to a place where I feel like I belong. I get what these kids are saying and I'm trying to show them that I can teach them something worth while. I think that has been the hardest part of teaching, is showing them that what we're talking about will help them regardless of what they plan to do when they're done with high school. One girl told me she didn't need to write well and have good grammar because she was going to be a hair stylist, I told her to go home and do some looking into what hair school requires and what running her own salon would require. She came back and I think that she understands now that I'm not teaching something trivial. Or at least that is the hope.
 More than anything though, I have never felt better about the decisions I have made in my college career that have brought me to this point. I guess my 18 year old self really did know what she was doing.

Once.

Once upon a time there was a girl who decided to go to Utah State and become and English teacher. All of this sounded really good because it was a really far off thing. She assumed she would get over her fear of talking in front of people and feel like she knew everything there was to know about being a good teacher. Then reality settled in and she realized that in four years of education she still gets scared in front of people and she feels like she knows less now about how to be a good teacher than she did was she graduated high school....
In two days I am going to have my own classroom of juniors and seniors patiently waiting to attack me and eat me alive. I don't know how this all came so fast. I was supposed to be more confident now and not scared of being up in front of a classroom. Having gone through the education program I now feel that I know a lot of good theories of teaching, but very little of the practical stuff I'm actually going to be using. Seriously, only two days?
I still have loads of questions. Like where do I eat lunch and am I grown up enough to eat in the teacher's lounge? I probably need a parking pass....where do I get this? What if I totally BOMB this thing?
I have legit been having nightmares about teaching for weeks. Classes where I show up and I'm teaching something like chemistry and I have no textbooks and the students don't learn anything and I fail student teaching. Gah....I'm in trouble. Not because I'm teaching chemistry, but because I'm teaching writing and that is just as bad. How do you teach someone to do something that comes instinctively to you? Give me literature. Great scott, give me Shakespeare and I will teach it happily, but not so. I get writing and I hope that I might be able to do something of some use for these kids. I'm nervous, but I hope that in some way this nervousness eventually translates into something I can use to be a good teacher.
Two days guys. Cross your fingers.

Christmas Break.

I had all of these great intentions about blogging throughout Christmas break before life gets crazy busy with student teaching and everything, and then the Xbox arrived and pretty much everything I planned on went out the window. Oops.
Mark and I had a wonderful break.
Tucanos with my family plus Coulson's friend Jake. He's basically family.
Christmas on Christmas Eve with Mark's family. (I got an amazing sewing machine, and now I just need a project to use it on. My in-laws are seriously the best yo.)
Christmas Eve dinner with my family.
Christmas morning with my family. Halo party after breakfast with my dad, Couslon, and Mark. It was pretty epic. Coulson wasted all of us.
Playing our new game Ticket to Ride: Europe....twice on Christmas and once just about every day after that.
Shopping for teaching clothes. I look totally professional guys, I might actually pass as older than 16 in these awesome clothes.
Eye doctor and dentist in one day. Who planned that? Oh wait....I did. Boo.
Anniversary weekend at the Hyatt in SLC.
Les Miserables and Happy Sumo. Great combo.
Shopping in Salt Lake with the hubs. Plus he looked quite dapper in his sweater and wool coat I got him for Christmas.
Jessi's Farewell. This girl is going to be an amazing missionary. The people of Armenia are very lucky.
Room service. Since after a 9 a.m. farewell in PG all we wanted to do was watch movies in sweats at the hotel. Lazy Sunday.
Visiting Amy and Jake, and our sweet niece Charlotte. Charlotte put my shoes on and walked around the house, it was pretty much adorable. And then Amy beat me at Ticket to Ride, she has been the only one except Mark who can do that.
Back to reality. Are we lame because we went to sleep at 10:30 on New Years? Probably. I missed my bed though. Hadn't slept in it for a week and a half.
Now it is back to reality for the both of us. A week and a half off work was incredible break that we both really needed, and the PTO didn't hurt either.
Up next: skiing/snowboarding on Friday. It's not supposed to snow, but if you want to do a snow dance for us, we really would love some powder.