Ponderings

I have a lot of thoughts in my head right now that I want to share, but because most of them involve student teaching, I'd rather not air them out while I'm still at the mercy of certain people. As a result, I am taking the blog private just for a few weeks; basically until I graduate and have all my letters of recommendation. So, if you want access, send me an e-mail with the e-mail you use to log into blogger.

As an update, I just completed week 9 of student teaching. I have three weeks left total, not counting the week of April 6-10, which is Spring Break for my school. Kent State's Spring Break was this week and all that meant for me was not having my Wednesday classes (which are in the midst of a 4 week layoff anyway) and no Institute today. Even in a normal week I only go on campus twice a week. I'm way excited and definitely ready for Spring Break, though. Just one more week. The last day off anyone at my school had was President's Day, which came at the end of a 4-day (which became a 5-day) break in the middle of February. So yeah, by the end of next week it will have been about 6 weeks since our last days off. See why I can't wait?!?!? Once this is private, I'll blog more about my "deeper" thoughts about student teaching and some of the experiences I've had thus far. It's not that I have a bunch or horribly negative things to say, but if I've learned anything from this past year of school, if there is any chance what I say can be misinterpreted, it will almost certainly happen, so better safe than sorry. This coming Monday is evaluation #3, which is my "midterm" evaluation. It will be done during 6th grade choir, my first class of the day. The benefit is that it will be done and over with relatively fast. The drawback is that 6th grade choir is always a challenge for me in many ways, so I guess it will be a true evaluation of what I can-- and cannot-- do; at least I hope.

For Spring Break I am going down to the DC area to visit Andy and Heather. We found out March 19 that they will be moving to Nashville as Heather will be doing her residency at Vanderbilt University, so this will be the last time for me to have a free place to stay to visit Washington, DC. Who knows when I'll be down there again! Really, while I do plan on visiting a few sites, I'm not planning too much since I really just want to get some rest and get out of town. I imagine much of my break will be spent sleeping and blogging! Andy and Heather will be gone during the day working most of the time I'm down there anyway. It will still be good to see them again. First time since Christmas.

More to come soon...send me those e-mail addresses if you want to see the blog while it goes private.

Multi-tasking at the game

Here I am at the Kent State vs. Buffalo men's basketball game at the MAC Center and would you know, but I'm multi-tasking by blogging while I watch the game. I've seemingly fallen off the earth in terms of blogging the last month as student teaching has pretty much taken over my life. I've become almost religious in getting to bed by 10:30 every night so that I get as close to 8 hours of sleep as possible. Only now, at the end of week 6, do I feel like I'm in some sort of routine and am not as tired as I have been during the day. However, come Monday I will basically assume my cooperating teacher's full schedule, meaning I'll be going non-stop for pretty much the entire day after my first period planning time. I can do it, but it isn't going to be busy and hard. I am currently planning for four classes full-time and I do the physical and vocal warm-ups for two of the choirs. After Monday I will add an additional general music class (so I'll have all three) and will assume a larger role in the other two choirs. This will only last for about 3 weeks before I start turning classes back over to my cooperating teacher as my time runs down. I must say it was music to my ears to hear my cooperating teacher ask today how I wanted to handle "turning classes back over" to him. That means time is marching on and we're at a point I can even think about how things will end! After tomorrow I will be halfway done...incredible!

Student teaching has been quite the experience. Since I'm not done with it yet, I don't really want to go into all the major details yet (I'm fully aware this is a public blog), but let's just say I've had some highs and some major lows. There have been two times thus far that it was hard to be motivated to stay or show up, but I did and have seemingly worked through the incredibly hard times. Now I'm heading down the homestretch and am excited, but also anxious. Now the big challenge is finding a job and staying local if at all possible. And let's not forget just finishing student teaching itself and doing well in the process. I still have six weeks (not counting the Spring Break at my school the first full week of April) so I'm not done yet.