It is hard to sum up the entire experience in one blog post, so I decided to jot down a few things I learned...
- You are on your feet 95% of the day. I never realized how much a teacher moves around throughout the school day. The only times I remember sitting down were for lunch, calendar, and reading to my students. Comfortable shoes are a must!
- You rarely ever see members of the staff. One of my friends was student teaching in fifth grade and I probably saw her 5 times total throughout the 8 weeks.
- Stay calm and carry on. You would think that being organized was the most important aspect of teaching (okay, it's the second most important thing), but staying calm and collected is by far the most important thing. The students can easily sense anxiety and become tense if their teacher is. I found this out after a wonderful day where our school's water stopped working and I had a substitute teacher with me.
- Find your own system for organizing units. My teacher has a specific Rubbermade bin for each month, or unit, that includes worksheets, manipulatives, decorations, and whatever else you need for that month. Other teachers have drawers, file folders, boxes, whatever they can find.
- Sleep is your best friend: if not sleep, caffeine. To have enough energy for the long days, it is important to stay well-rested. If you need a boost, take caffeine pills or drink soda! Each morning after breakfast (which is also important!), I would take a One-A-Day energy-based vitamin. I would hate to think of how my days would have gone without them.
- Flexibility is key. With counselor lessons, fire protection days, assemblies, new students, observations, power outages, illnesses, and anything else that may be thrown at you, your schedule for the day may be thrown for a loop. Just go with it -- you can't control it all!
- If life becomes stressful, just take a step back and realize: this is what you were meant to do. I've realized throughout this time that I cannot picture myself doing anything else. Teaching is so fulfilling and my students keep be going.
I learned plenty more and will probably add to this later.
Another thing I wanted to share was my newly-found crafty side. I created a crayon letter for my teacher as a thank you gift. This was a fun and easy project I found online.
Items:
- shadow box
- construction or cardstock paper
- 2 boxes of crayons
- Elmer's glue
- Carving knife
Directions:
- I cut my cardstock paper to the size of my shadow box (8x10).
- I then chose the crayons I wanted to use for this project and guesstimated how many to use.
- I cut the crayons in half using the carving knife. To do this, I rolled the crayon under the knife. It gave me a clean cut!
- I laid out the crayons again on my cardstock. Once perfected, I glued the pieces together. I started with the crayons in the middle of the letter, then moved out.
- Next, I cut a smaller piece of construction paper, another color, and wrote my teacher's name with another crayon. I glued that on the side.
- I put it in the shadow box and it was good to go!
I was proud of this project and decided to do something for my little kiddos as well! Since it is October and we are learning about fall, I wanted to make a pumpkin snack for them. I came up with pumpkin rice crispy treats!
Basically, I made rice crispy's like normal, but added orange food coloring (or in my case, yellow and red. More yellow than red). Once dried, you can mold the treats with your hands and stick a pretzel stick into the top. I used black icing for the faces. So cute! Just warn your students that the black will show up on their lips! Our wet wipes at school definitely helped.
Wow, such a wonderful experience, I cannot believe it is over! I hope to visit my kids another time this semester. I miss them already. What's next for me? Back to classes, nannying and working. Back to real life, I guess!
