Wednesday, Wednesday...

I'm three days in to my practicum... and today is the hardest day of the week (the kiddos are with us all day long!). I love them and their funny senses of humour, their grossness (who thought sharing the same teal eyeshadow and brushes was a good idea? really! Or socks randomly in the middle of the classroom floor...), their hatred of writing notes, and their complete inability to be quiet!
That last one is like some cosmic 'ahahaha' getting back at me for years of just talking and talking. Yesterday I left my room at lunch seeking some quiet solace somewhere in the school. Somewhere. Anywhere. My ears where just ringing! I found it, found some delightful teacher company, and then half an hour later I was ready to go again.

My two biggest challenges are behavior management (I've yet to develop my 'take control teacher style') and the sheer amount of questions that I have! Other than those two peices that I'm sure will eventually just come, everything else has been just awesome.  I've been cooking up some fun ideas for our learning- and a few are quite non traditional. I'm kind of worried that the lack of writing that I'm currently thinking in science is going to be hard on them. How terrible is it that I'm thinking of getting rid of a game so that I can get them to reflect on an experience (in a form that is longer than the question-reflection that I've decided to incorporate into our lessons).

Well, instead of proofing this, I've gotta go make some tea and head out to school.

Slow slow slow

My life keeps speeding up. I have a bunch of assignments due (11!) in the next two weeks, a practicum to prep for, the snow is currently falling outside my window, and I also need to maintain at least a minimal semblance of a social life (ha ha!) in order to maintain my sanity. 

I realize that this is probably a good example as to what the rest of my life will be looking like, but I certainly hope the rest of my life also includes an income! Times like these also reinforce how essential it is for me to find stability, quietness and moments to come back down to earth. I usually end up making a cup of tea, or stress baking (a past time also demonstrated by many of my friends) and then forcing other people to eat my creations. It generally works out well so long as I haven't invented anything exceptionally crazy- such as the time I dyed the milk blue.

Tonight I was washing the dishes by hand and listening to the radio softly twittering away and I had a moment of calmness in the middle of the storm. I'm one of those people who never really knows the 'right' thing to say, but I really believe in just being. Being present, being witness, being there and listening and grounding for people who need that when their lives get carried away with one problem or difficulty. I found myself being present for myself. Which sounds strange, only really, I don't know if it is.

I intend to do this for my students. To give them a foundation to ground themselves so that they can do amazing things. To perform this role, I need to keep myself calm (or create a reasonable facade!) be organized and maintain a structured classroom. For students to be productive they need a tightly run ship, else many get lost in the chaos that is learning. 

How do I keep myself in this place? By baking bread (something I just realized I missed tonight!), making tea in a teapot, crocheting the most hideous blankets you've ever seen, taking the time to interact positively with people in my daily travels, take pictures of things that make me happy, and to make time and talk to the people I love. 

Tomorrow I have a lot of work that I need to accomplish. But tonight I'm going to go make another cup of tea, get caught up on my crafty blogs, and hope that I can find my wool slippers somewhere. Its cold out there!