Stop the ride, I want to get off!

Sorry I've been so absent (again!)

Where were we?
Last time you heard from me, I was in the middle of the 40 Hour Famine. Well, I finished it! I thought hours 16-18 were tough at the time, but it was really hours 25-27 that nearly killed it for me. I ended up having to abandon the sleepover we had planned at school and go and sleep in my own bed. Sometimes you just need to, you know?

Anyway, I made it to Hour 40.

And then I celebrated by having a huge beef burger, chips and lemonade an hour later.

:)

Followed by Nutella and Peanut Butter flavoured gelato

:) :)

Is there any better way to break your 40 hour charity fast? I think not.


I totally meant to take photos of the weekend, but the hunger got to me and I forgot about anything else except my empty stomach. Although I did end up doing a lot of my Primary Maths & Numeracy assignment, which was a total bonus! We had "rooms" throughout the building which were dedicated to certain activities- the movie room, the games console (Xbox, PlayStation, Wii) room, the chill out room (complete with white noise machine) and yes, the study room for all of us dedicated uni students.

If we had to go without food, the least we could do was entertain ourselves throughout the process!


Anyway, I digress (again). That was two weekends ago. This past weekend was fabulous, full of fun and sunshine. I had just finished a crazy week at uni (all the Education students referred to it as 'The Week From Hell' because we had so many assessments due) that reached its peak when I came home on Thursday night only to discover that part of my Primary English & Literacy assignment, that I had done DAYS in advance, had simply.disappeared.vanished.gone.completely.



As you do, if you were a lowly Word document.



Needless to say, there was lots of frustration, venting and crying from yours truly, until I admitted to myself that I should probably start writing it all over again, seeing as it was due Friday night. The unfairness of it all still gets to me, and I shall never know whether my computer really did literally 'lose the plot' or if I just failed to save it.



(But wouldn't I have gotten a "Would you like to save message" when I closed the program? I'm a smart girl, I would have clicked "Yes". Unless the WFH - Week From Hell, had gotten to me so badly that I just clicked "No" in a valiant attempt at telling the world "Stop the ride, I want to get off!")



Writing that line just made me think of one of my favourite songs from the band MercyMe

"If it came to a stop, and someone let me off I know I would just get right back in line."



True. Very true.



Of course I survived the WFH, and promptly told my mum that I needed to spend Saturday with some kids. So I grabbed my godson and his sister, and took them to the Penrith Show for a few hours.



Sunshine + kids + carnival rides = JOY



And I felt all the more better for it. Pictures to come, of course.





Fast forward to this week, and I am currently one day into a week-long prac with my adopted Year 2 class. Today I taught my first ever whole class lesson and it was AWESOME! My lesson was on Maths (parallel lines) and I decided to make it fun and incorporate Visual Arts into it by getting the kids to draw parallel lines on a big A3 sheet of paper and then use diluted pain to brush over it, creating a crayon resist painting. I did show the class one I had "prepared earlier", but I let them do their own thing, and the results were fantastic!



2J is now the home of some multicoloured, stripey artworks that also happen to be rockin' some parallel lines.



And what's the point of teaching fun stuff like this if you can't do it yourself?

I present to you, my masterpiece:

40 Hour Famine

All the young adults from our church are currently holed up at our old school, doing the 40 hour famine. The boys are currently playing a violent war game on XBox and PlayStation simulatenously, while sitting across from each other, and the girls are playing Tennis on the Wii.
I'm nearly on Hour 20, halfway and going strong!

Covergirl

So, I wasn't going to post these on here, but then I realised it'd save me having to post a copy to my Dad, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc... who want to see it.

Back in February, I got asked by my university to do a photoshoot for their 2011 brochure. Since I had a scholarship for my undergraduate degree, I used to get asked to do all sorts of promotional stuff for the uni. I got my hair and make-up done (but wore my own clothes) and had fun being a covergirl for an hour or so.

Last week, I finally received a copy of the brochures (there's one that's just an Undergraduate Program brochure and another that is specifically for the Arts Degree).

So... let's just pretend I'm posting a picture of someone else, because otherwise this is highly embarrassing (and I'm not a huge fan of the photos anyway!) I would also like to concur with the widely held belief that the camera adds ten pounds- otherwise I may need to go hide in a corner and cry!

Baking and Teaching

Tomorrow our Youth Group is holding special 'Girls Only' and 'Guys Only' nights for our kids that come along- the guys are going to play mini-golf, while the girls stay in and have a mocktails pyjama party! I have promised (as always) to bake cupcakes. Normally I bake the cupcakes the day before, and ice them the day of... well, tomorrow is Friday which means Youth Group, and have I baked anything? Nope.

I always use the Magnolia Bakery recipe for vanilla cupcakes, because I've had the opportunity to taste some from their NYC bakery and they are the best I've ever tasted.

What's even better is that they've compiled all the recipes they use at the bakery into a cookbook, and now even when I just bake them myself at home, you get fabulous cupcakes every time.

Hello... yum!



(Why does my icing never turn out like that?!)


Anyway, I digress. I'm sorry if I inadvertedly made you crave cupcakes.

What's been happening in my world? One word: STUDY

If it's not working on an assignment or project, it's lesson planning! Because finally, FINALLY, I am getting to go on prac (aka professional experience, aka Be a Student Teacher) and it is not without it's fair share of work.

I realise that I haven't mentioned much about my prac on here yet, so to summarise:

I have a Year 2 class with a male teacher who is also the assistant principal for the K-2 grades. He is very relaxed and laid back in his teaching style, and the kids seem to love him.

There are 22 kids in the class, which is pretty small by usual standards.

The ability range in this class alone is ASTOUNDING. We got told in our Prac lectures that it's possible to get a range of seven years in ability in a class, and I was all "Yeah right, seven years, as if!" but it's totally true. There is one girl in 2J who is reading and spelling words that a high school kid would struggle with (like germinate, scenery, rhubarb and chrysanthemum) and a boy who is below kindergarten level with his reading.

(I'll admit, I panicked when I first realised this, and thought "How in the world am I going to be able to develop lesson plans for this class?!")

I tried to fly under the radar at the school, being an ex-student and all, but a teacher (who I never even had as a class teacher) recognised me and before long it was "Oh, YOU'RE the ex-student!" everywhere I went.

All the prac students (there are 8 of us at this school) sit in one long line on the seats in the staffroom, like we are afraid to be separated. Except when one of us has to go on playground duty with our supervising teacher (who we basically shadow all day, except for recess and lunch time).

My class doesn't have the much lauded Interactive Whiteboard. The Year 2 class next door does. Bummer. Guess I'll have to teach old-school style.

I've memorised about 20 out of 22 names. Well, that was on Monday. We'll see how many I remember when I go back this coming Monday.

The first day, this past Monday, I mainly just observed and got to meet and chat with the kids. The coming Monday is when I will actually start acting as a student teacher, and I will teach a small group lesson (reading groups). The week after that, we have a week-long block, which is when we really get thrown into the deep end!

Our supervising teachers get PAID to take us on as prac students. I don't know why, but I was surprised by this. The principal of the school assured us that you "couldn't even buy a pair of shoes" with the amount of money the university pays them, so I guess it's more of a token thankyou present than anything else.

What else, what else? All my students seemed great, but it was only my first day, so we shall see. I'm just excited to finally be TEACHING! I've spent a lot of time in classrooms, but always as a volunteer or teacher's aide, and have never actually planned, taught and evaluated a lesson before. Or had myself as a teacher evaluated! That part's a little daunting, but our teachers have to give us lots of verbal feedback first before the start formally assessing us on paper, so that allows for any minor problems to be straightened out.

Mostly I'm just so EXCITED to be getting the opportunity to meet and teach these kids! It feels like a long time coming... I can't wait for next Monday!

Time

I spend half my time in class wishing it would go faster.

Except for yesterday when I went on my first school prac and the day flew by far too quickly.
Then I realise it's August already and I think where has the time gone?
Then I recognise that i'm a third of the way through my masters and how did that happen?
Then I realise it's been four years that I've been at uni and wow that's really the start of my adult life, spent at the same place.
Then I recognise that this time next year I'll be a fully fledged teacher! How crazy is that?!
Then I realise that I'm 22 years old and how did THAT happen?
Time is playing tricks on me.

Back to School

Was it really in July that I last posted? Wow. I'm such a bad blogger. I hadn't even noticed that it had been that long! I've been so flat out with uni work that everything else got put on the backburner I guess.

So... what have I been up to? I have classes pretty much all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursdays are the best days, because:
a) it's the shortest day at uni for me (only 2 classes, 1.5 hours each)
and
b) I have my Science & Technology class, where we get to play with materials and make cool stuff!

It's just like being a kid at school again, except we don't get bossed around by a teacher, and we have little instructions so we get to figure it out for ourselves. Things to remember for when I am the teacher, right?!

Here's a photo of me from class yesterday, where we made traffic lights out of polysterene cups, wood, hot glue, masking tape, aluminium foil, coloured cellophane, a 9V battery, 6 wires and a light bulb! So much fun- and we're adults! Can you imagine how much fun kids would have doing this stuff?

Showing off our technical prowess:


We even made our own "switch" out of a small piece of wood, thumbtacks and a paperclip, so you can choose whether to have the red, orange or green light on.


See! It really does light up!

We are learning lots of cool stuff in this class- last week we made cars out of milk or juice cartons, then we put them on a ramp and had a race! Unfortunately my car's back axle was a bit skew-iff and the car veered to the right a lot... needless to say, it didn't win.

Our teacher recorded it all on his mini flip camera and then played it on the data projector through his laptop for us all to see! We also made graphs on the laptop, interactive whiteboard and regular whiteboard- can you imagine how much fun kids would have with that? Not to mention all the learning involved- lots of maths in particular (measurement, speed, physics and gravity, just from racing the cars themselves!)


I can't wait until we get to go on prac (next Monday!!!) and get to bring all these ideas we've learnt and put them into practice in a real classroom.

Have I mentioned where I'm going on prac? My old primary school! How funny is that?! It will be weird to be back there after about 10 years- and even weirder to be there as a teacher! I'll get to go in the staffroom! That was definitely a no-no when I was a student there. It'll be like getting a backstage pass! Behind the scenes at CMPS!

Just for fun, here's me back in 1998 and 1999, in the school uniform! I'm thinking I'll take these photos in to class on Monday, just in case the students don't believe me when I tell them I went there too!

Look at that badge on my collar- that was for School Representative Council, I think.
I wish my hair still looked like that- beautiful and straight, and look at my natural colour! I will spend the rest of my life trying to get a hairdresser who can attempt to dye it back to that blondey-brown colour.

And this blue badge on the photo down the bottom here? That was for Library Monitor. Don't laugh- it was cool back then! Everyone wanted to be a Library Monitor. It basically meant that you got to pretend to be in charge of all the kids who were in the library at lunchtime.

I remember this photo day- I was growing my fringe out, and had my mum put one roller in the front just so it wouldn't hang in my eyes and look horrible by the time it came to get photos taken (because we were in the older grades, we were always the last to get our photos taken, right at the end of the day after lunch when you were all sweaty from playing at lunchtime).

I still looked cute though. If only it was that easy now. You just wait til Monday- I'll be up at the crack of dawn, blowdrying my hair, putting makeup on, deliberating over outfit choices! Kids don't know how easy they have it!