Graduation and Such

Celebration with my fellow Professional Development School class of 2010 was awesome! There was food, fun photographs, plaques given by the superintendent of Pekin District 108, tears, food, family, friends and goodbyes. It astounds me that the 24 of us will be sprinkled across the state of Illinois, with a few even venturing out of state. We have been together for so long, it seems surreal (in the best of ways) that we will be teaching in so many different places. I wish them all jobs in schools that are the right fit for their personalities and interests.

Graduation was a little over a week ago. It went well, despite the person who had a seizure during the Dean of Education's speech. The newspaper said he was alright.

About an hour after being handed my diploma, I was lifting cardboard boxes and moving all of my earthy possessions to a new apartment. Two of my wonderful friends stayed to help with the monumental task. Over a week later, I am still putting things away, but the end is in sight. 13 days before I spend two weeks at my parents' house preparing for my wedding. 25 days until the big day. So much is happening so quickly. Isn't life wonderful?!

How far I have come in the past year: how much I have learned.

Wrapping it Up

My last full week in the classroom with the students! We have a lot of wrapping up to do. This week we will listen to the podcasts the students made about the regions of the United States of America and taking quizzes on them, encasing eggs in various materials in an attempt to keep their fragile shells from cracking, graphing Lucky Charms (and various other data), and wrapping up our literary essays. Busy, busy fourth graders!

I am still in the classroom Monday and Tuesday, but my mentor takes over again (which I'm sure will feel different for me, as I have been planning and teaching the class since February). Almost everything for Illinois State University is done and uploaded, so things are coming to a close all around. Two projects left, but they involve me unleashing my inner creative mind, so of course, I will have a blast.

Saying goodbye to my students will not be easy, but I feel I am ready to embark on the journey of continual learning through a classroom of my own. Applications are in and I am trusting in God to lead me to the school I will be best suited for, as I know He will provide!

Blogging and Podcasting in the Classroom

So I am planning on integrating blogging and podcasting into an activity post Illinois State Achievement Tests. It will be in conjunction with our unit on regions of the United States of America. Hopefully the integration of technology will excite the students and give them that drive to want to learn (that is so hard to achieve sometimes).

How do I feel about this? I had a professor that required us to respond regularly on a wiki and blog as a part of the class (the blog was apart from this one, and actually inspired me to begin this one). So I feel I have some experience with this. But enough to teach students how to do it? I will do my research, set everything up ahead of time and all will go well, I hope. I do realize restrictions will need to be placed on the blog so that all the postings are monitored. But all in all, this should be an exciting endeavor and I will keep you updated as to our progress in this exciting step forward.

Setting Up

This week I attended classes (in which I was a student) and helped my mentor teacher set up the classroom.

It is amazing what six years of teaching will do for you! She had an abundance of information on how to do little everyday things. Her classroom library was amazing. It had lots of different books in several genres. She did mention that she would like to get more non fiction, but that the school library had a vast variety of non fiction, so the students still had access to books of that nature.

I am excited that we are going to incorporate mini lessons and writing workshops for reading and writing into the curriculum. My C and I 208 and 209 teachers would be proud :D

I worked with another intern to put up our first ever bulletin board! We even came up with the design ideas ourselves. We ran into some space difficulties, but three tries later, we finally got something that would fit. I was shocked at how much time it takes to make a bulletin board, but perhaps the time decreases with practice and preset ideas. I will post a picture of our board when I get one.

Coming up next week: district retreat and back to school night!