What We Think, We Become

This has been a weekend of much time in thought. It's been relaxing, in that I haven't really had a whole lot of pressing work to do. However, it's been exhausting as well, due to the massive amount of just thinking about my future I've been partaking in. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm not the only person who exists in the world, that there are bigger questions to be answered in the world than what my long-term job should be. I don't know how it is for everyone else when they're trying to make a big decision, but for me, there's a certain amount of friction that goes on in my brain, constantly irritating my thoughts and not allowing me to focus on much else until the decision is resolved. I haven't been sleeping much in the past 2 weeks, with the exception of last night. Fortunately, I believe clarity is coming to me on my decision, which is allowing me to finally focus on other people, other activities, and on just being a functional human being. I ran outside today (after about 2 months of nothingness), cleaned, and did a legitimate amount of homework, none of which happens if my mind is a complete mess. That's about all I want to say about this decision for awhile, but please just keep me in your thoughts that the choice I make is the right one.

When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go

Ah, another week down. My first week with kiddos has been exhausting, frustrating, exciting, entertaining, and gross all in one. Probably not in that order, though. A few highlights (and lowlights) from my week:

• One of the students told me that he hopes I get a job at Stephen Foster so I can be his teacher all the time, because I'm the best teacher. And then he gave me like 10 hugs. Yes, all the education interns experience this stuff during their internships/practicums, but I still love it. I do not, however, love it so much when I move to middle school and boys try to do that.
• My teacher may be having to move to a non-special education class due to some issues with numbers of students in classes. If this happens, I will have to get a different teacher to work with, which will set me back quite a bit in getting my assignments done. I won't be too upset either way; if I get to stay, I get to be with all the kids I've already gotten to know, and I'm well-aware of what's expected of me at this school. If I don't get to stay, I might get a placement in a school closer (e.g. not an hour of driving each day) to where I'm living, which is an area of town in which I'd prefer to work.
• I've been asked if I'm married more times than I can count this week.
• For an hour and a half each day, I have kindergarteners. On the first day of them coming to special ed, I was sitting next to a little girl at the computers when suddenly I heard a weird noise and felt my foot getting wet... I looked down, and this adorable, precious child had let loose the contents of her bladder aaaaaaall over my foot, the chair, and the floor. Reminds me of the movie Billy Madison, when Adam Sandler tells everyone that all the cool kids pee their pants. That was quite a day.
• I got my first flight home planned out! Since I have to fly back to take the OPTE, I'll be in Oklahoma from October 14 through October 17 so I can get that done. I really like Florida, but I'm glad to have a visit to Oklahoma in my sights at the moment. A month and a half till I get to feel that glorious fall weather!

I become more and more grateful every week that there's such a thing as a weekend. Around Monday or Tuesday, weekends seem to be a myth, but I have definite confirmation today that they do in fact exist. I've been trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with my special education degree when I finish student teaching-- find a teaching job for January, apply with HeadStart (an early intervention service for at-risk kids), go to grad school to get a Master's degree in something different but related (such as speech pathology), or go in a totally different direction for awhile. Some days I have a great day at the school, and other days I leave wishing I never had to go back. These feelings aren't really based on anything specific, like a certain bad event, but I don't always feel confident that this is what I want to do. I go back and forth on my career thoughts on a daily basis, and I'm trying to keep thoughts of panic out of my mind until at least toward the end of the semester.

This weekend, Tracy's dad is visiting! He'll be here tonight and Saturday, so that'll be fun. We may have to go try out a new Mexican food restaurant while he's here. Saturday night, Tracy and I are gonna hang out with friends, but not sure what we're going to do yet. Sunday will be a day of major relaxation, as well as attempting to start on some of my work for my internship. We're both staying veeeery busy and taking life as it comes, but overall that's a pretty good feeling. Hope everyone has a fun weekend!

Unpacking AGAIN, Falling Objects, and Extreme Exhaustion

First, let me preface this post by stating that I absolutely love my cooperating teacher for the first part of my internship. She's funny, flexible, and so helpful to me. We've had a great week together getting the classroom ready for students to come (they show up on Tuesday for her).

Now, let me say that it's not even a little bit nice when the principal tells you Thursday morning of the pre-planning week that you'll be moving classrooms. I wanted to cry as I moved my teacher's 40-plus years of junk from one portable building to a further away one. Did I mention that summertime in Florida is kinda toasty? It was about 95 degrees with 95% humidity. When I moved here, I was really looking forward to not having to move stuff in the heat again for a long, long time. Eh, I lasted approximately 3 weeks.

A side note for all you teachers and future teachers out there: when filing cabinets are moved from one classroom to another, the contents shift inside. This may result in falling glass snow globes and various other gravity-loving objects. These objects may fall on your head and cause a couple days of pain. Just saying.

On the bright side of all this, I met a lot of people while moving. I had good conversations with the custodians, the art teacher, the lady who hands out the year's textbooks, and the librarian. For the first time in all my practicum-type stuff, I feel as though I'm beginning to know what it feels like to actually be part of a school and feel welcome. I have a hunch that I'm going to be pretty sad to leave this school in 7 more weeks.

School has been dominating my life this week, so it's nice to get done and spend time with Tracy. I'm quite proud of him this week because he got a card from the people on his last rotation (trauma surgery) saying that the nurses voted him someone who gave excellent patient care and always made sure that problems and issues were resolved. They gave him a little gift card and thanked him for being a bad-a :). Yay for Tracy!

I've been looking for a fitness center to join in Gainesville so I can work out, as it's waaaay too humid here in the summer to exercise outside. Unfortunately, there aren't too many good ones here, and some of them are REALLY expensive, so the search continues.

Ok that's all! Haha. Good luck to all my new teacher friends as they begin their careers! Thinking of you all.

Becoming a Teacher

Suddenly in the past two days, I've become busy. I have to say, I like it a lot. Well, except for when 6 a.m. rolls around and my body is still trying to get caught up on sleep. I had my first official day of student teaching yesterday (minus the students), as I went to Foster to help with pre-planning. This includes going to faculty meetings and grade level meetings, plus helping organize/set up/decorate my teacher's classroom. Thing I do like to do: Go through classroom books to find a wide variety of interesting reading materials for the students to choose during the school year. Thing I do NOT like to do: Cut out giant sheets of colored paper by myself to cover up an ugly chalkboard, preferably in an artistic and non-four-year-old manner. People who know me well could tell you that I am not an artistic person. I don't write neatly, I don't do well with the sparkly happy girly decorating stuff, and I don't enjoy super artsy-craftsy projects. That being said, trying to maneuver ginormous pieces of paper to lay perfectly smoothly on a chalkboard is not my idea of a good time. However, the book part of the day did make up for that. As I leafed through titles about space, nature, pets, and pretty much any subject you can imagine, I remembered how I felt in school when I got to choose ANY book I wanted for free reading time. There was a sense of wonder in that, as though the possibilities were endless. No book report, no one telling you the book wasn't on your "level" (whatever that means), no one choosing for you. It was a big deal as a kid to get to truly pick something as part of your work at school. With that memory in my mind, I did my best to choose a large variety of books with diverse subjects, illustration styles, and levels. Sometimes I wish they would pay me to just read children's books all day...

I've met some really nice teachers at the school so far. They've invited me out to lunch both days, so I feel pretty included right now. I've never been at a school that has teachers who are this friendly right off the bat; even though most of them are old enough to be my mom, I enjoy the time I spend with them and (after a little pep talk with Tracy) realize now that I'm not really in college anymore, a lot of my "friends" will be people I work with, who may be a whole lot older than me. They invited me to a jewelry party this Thursday, and I think I'll probably go :).

This first 8 weeks, I will be teaching an hour of 3rd grade math, an hour and a half of 4th grade reading, an hour and a half of kindergarten reading, and an hour of interventions (which I believe is pretty much double doses of certain subjects for certain kids). I'm actually really excited about this schedule and can't imagine a better range of ages. I love kindergarten kids, especially for reading, but I also think I want to teach around the 4th grade level, so I'm pleased that I'll be doing a little of both.

On an unrelated note, I wish Oklahoma had Publix grocery stores. That's all they have here (seriously... it takes 40 minutes to get to a Super Wal-Mart), and I must say after my first experience at one yesterday, I love it! Everything is brightly lit, the produce doesn't suck, and no one is rude/trashy/rushing you while you're trying to get your stuff. Sorry Wal-Mart, but Publix is my new grocery store soulmate... That's all for now! (Don't worry, I'll work on these endings)

Ti Amo

As part of my last weekend of freedom before the school-ish stuff began, Tracy and I planned to go to Cedar Key, which is about 50 miles from here, for the evening to eat dinner and have a fun little date night. Alas, sometimes I think Gainesville should be called Rainesville, because in the summer months it does a LOT of that. We decided it would kind of suck to drive all the way to go eat at a waterfront restaurant if it was pouring down rain, so that idea is tabled for another day.

Instead, we went downtown to a really cute restaurant called Ti Amo. It was kind of a cool atmosphere, with dim lighting and understated decor. The menu has some crazy-looking stuff on it (octopus and baby goat, for example), so it took us a minute to find acceptable-sounding meals, but he settled on a gyro made with lamb instead of their traditional tempeh (which is apparently fermented soybeans. Odd), and I had the Gulf shrimp on pasta with some sort of slightly sweet sauce. It was pretty good, especially when we discovered that even though it was a fancy place, they'd still bring us Coke to drink :). They had amazing focaccia bread, and we both really liked the departure from our usual type of restaurant atmosphere. We wouldn't necessarily go there again often, simply because it's a little more exotic than we typically like, but it was a novel experience for our Saturday date night.

After that, we watched Death at a Funeral and had a relaxing evening. Definitely a nice diversion from the fact that SCHOOL STARTS TOMORROW!!! Aaaaaahhhhhhh... Although no kiddos for another week, so I still have some time to have a little bit of a summer with no assignments and no paid work. Tomorrow morning at 7:45 a.m. I'll be making the half-hour-ish drive to the school where I'll be spending the next 8 weeks of my life to meet my supervising teacher and help her set-up her classroom. Getting closer to being a real-live adult!

He who fails to plan, plans to fail

I'd like to report that our dinner date went quite splendidly last night :). The place was actually called Blue Highway Pizza, and with the exception of the electricity going out for a few minutes, it was a really fun evening. I enjoyed getting to know a few new people in the area, and Tracy and I are pretty confident that we'll continue to be friends with these people in the future. It was really nice to get out and socialize a little, and I hope to be doing more of it soon.

I've gotten final confirmation that I've been hired with a tutoring company here, so now I'm just waiting for school to start so I can start teaching some kiddos! Since the tutoring company contracts with schools, I don't get to start working with kids till the school year starts. It'll be excellent to actually make a decent paycheck even in my student teaching semester. I'll be busy, but Tracy is busy too, so at least we'll both be busy and getting paid for it.

One important thing I did today was take the advice of the above-mentioned new friends and get to Wal-Mart early for some school supplies (UF students haven't all flooded back into town yet, but they're coming). I searched for and found the ever-so-important planner, something that I hold more dear than nearly all material possessions. I never thought I'd be one of those people, but in the last couple years of college, I came to depend on my planner for keeping school, practicum, field experiences, and extracurricular stuff organized so I didn't forget vital due dates and appointment times. It sounds silly, but purchasing this planner gives me the biggest sense of calm about beginning the semester. I've already written everything important that I know of so far into the planner, and I'm waiting with pen poised for more assignments and obligations. I feel as though if I have it written down, it's do-able. From my planner I can make a list for the week of what I need to get done and in what order, and each step gets crossed off the list one by one. You may laugh at how anal I've become about these things, but it has helped me stay a week ahead of my college due dates for the past 2 years, thus alleviating a lot of the stress I used to feel.

I hope this weekend to possibly go to some of the natural springs around here. For the Oklahoma people, this is a lot like "floating the river" near Tahlequah. I think it would be a cheap and relaxing way to spend my last truly free weekend with no school stuff to worry about.

Tuesday

Here I am again, ready to entertain you with yet another riveting piece about the daily happenings of the final week of my summer vacation. Ha.

Today I drove across town (when I say across town, I mean a good 35 minute drive with some traffic) to get fingerprinted for my part-time job. After some confusion about in which building this process was to take place, I finally found where to go, paid my 80-something bucks (ridiculous), and had a crazy lady take my fingerprints as she told me about how she made up the word "fluffy" to describe angry people. As in, "I don't know if I can take my lunch break when the office is this busy. I wouldn't want people to get fluffy." All in all, a strange experience. After that, I drove by my new home for the next 8 weeks, Stephen Foster Elementary. Have I mentioned that their mascot is the Steamers? Hehehe.

The only other semi-productive thing I've done today is amble over to the pool for an hour or so. I'd like to report that I'm tanner than I've been all summer, although still probably pale by most people's standards. I'm a person who kinda hates lying by the side of a pool and sweating my face off in the name of a sun-kissed glow. However, if I had the option to go play in the waves for a few hours each day in St. Augustine to achieve said glow, I'd jump at that chance. Sooo that being said, I got bored quickly and came back. Now I'm just waiting for Tracy to get off work so we can hang out. Would it be a crime if I said that I'm actually sort of ready for school to start? I'd like to meet some people and be occupied during the day, and preferably make a little moolah as well.

Oh, tomorrow night Tracy and I are going to dinner with another resident and her husband. Trying out Blue Moon Pizza! Yay for making a few new friends in the area and going out to eat. The end.

Tampa and Other Happenings

This was in the backyard. Fancy! (It's a Redheaded Woodpecker)

Hello again! Sometime on Thursday, Tracy and his parents and I decided we'd go down to Tampa and spend the night so we could check out the Gulf... We drove down yesterday and stayed at a hotel right on Clearwater Beach. I wouldn't go as far as to say the water was actually clear, but it was warm and made you bob up and down and was a totally different experience than St. Augustine. Due to said bobbing, I got a little nauseous on this trip, but it was nothing that a little nap down by the pool couldn't fix. Did I mention that I'm really suffering and deprived of fun times? :) Actually, I feel like I've been on about 3 vacations this week. It's been nice to explore some of the state, but this coming week (my last week before school starts), I look forward to a little downtime in Gainesville... Sadly, we had to take Tracy's parents back to the airport today so they could catch a flight back to Wyoming. I really enjoyed spending so much time with them this week and "bonding," as Tracy likes to say.

Another exciting event since my last post is that the tutoring company I applied with here has decided to hire me, pending some fingerprints (which, by the way, are expensive to get done in every state... Why they can't just use my fingerprints from Oklahoma, I'll never know), as well as a completed W4 form and a direct deposit form. It pays well and will allow me to not have to work myself to death outside of my 40-hour a week unpaid job (yay student teaching) in order to have some cash for bills and saving.

Finally, my supervising teaching at Westwood Middle School-- that's my 2nd student teaching assignment-- has responded to my initial email, and she seems incredibly nice. I believe I'll be doing inclusion math, which scares the ever-living crap out of me, but I hope it'll be a good experience. The teacher was very friendly and is getting back to me on what I need to do to prepare for her classroom since she now knows the dates I'll be there.

It's currently hot, humid, and thundering, so hopefully we'll get some nice rain soon. Tracy and I are going to watch "Salt" at the movie theater tonight. A first date in a new state, one might say (if one liked to make up cheesy rhymes. Which one does). Life is moving right along, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

St. Augustine

Yesterday was vacation day! Tracy and Co. and I drove down to St. Augustine, which is about an hour and a half from here. We ate lunch, then hit the beach for a couple hours. The water was absolutely perfect-- I plan to come back for Thanksgiving looking much tanner than you all! Haha... Once we all dried off, we hit the outlet malls for a little shopping. Guess jeans, 2 pairs for 50 bucks. Amazing! Tracy's parents asked one of the cashiers where would be a good restaurant to eat dinner, and she suggested Creekside Dinery, a place all the locals like to eat. The atmosphere of that restaurant was really cool. We sat out on a big deck overlooking a waterway, and there were a couple of raccoons that would venture to the edge of the deck for a piece of breadstick or some fish. It was about dark when we arrived, and the deck was surrounded in Christmas lights and shaded in big trees. There was also good live music. Oh, and did I mention that the food was pretty delightful too? Shrimp scampi, get in my belly! We finally arrived back in Gainesville around 11:30 last night. Tracy and I really want to spend several more weekends in St. Augustine, and I'm enjoying the fact that I have a place to go for cheap mini-vacations within a short driving distance. A great day of sun, shopping, and of course, fooooood.

Unpacking, Unpacking, and More Unpacking...

Today has been a day of getting some stuff organized. I always feel better when things are unpacked, clean, and put away (even though I'm a messy person), so as I have unpacked today I've started to feel more calm and less frazzled... For lunch, I went with Tracy's parents to meet his aunt and uncle at Steak and Shake (my first time at this restaurant!), which was very enjoyable.

I also found out some more info about my placements. Stephen Foster Elementary School is a Title I school, with 68% of the school population being economically disadvantaged and 21% having a disability. The school is very racially mixed. I'm excited to begin my student teaching here, as it sounds as though it'll be a completely different experience than the schools I'm used to being in in Norman. This school gets out at 1:45 each day, except for Wednesdays, in which they are finished at 12:30. That's going to be a nice change as well-- I can actually eat something other than a sandwich for lunch on Wednesdays! It's the small things that make life enjoyable :)

The second school in which I am placed, Westwood Middle School, has school uniforms. I am with a co-teacher/inclusion specialist, which means I'll probably be in a general education classroom at least most of the time. I'm not sure their school even has a distinct special ed classroom. I'm a little nervous about this aspect of my placement; middle schoolers without disabilities intimidate me slightly, and I don't feel that I look much older than them, so it feels difficult to establish authority. At my most recent middle school placement, I was mistaken for a new student a few times. I'm crossing my fingers that my teacher works mainly with 6th graders.

Things I Have Learned So Far

1. Gainesville is humid. Very humid. Sometimes I can't tell if I'm walking or swimming.

2. I am a directionally challenged person. I have not yet mastered the art of knowing whether I'm driving into town or out of town.

3. Things come when you finally stop worrying about them. I received my email from Dr. Lovett last night telling me where my placements will be this fall, I will be at Stephen Foster Elementary School and Westwood Middle School.

4. I already love living somewhere that's completely dense with trees.

The beginning of life in Gainesville is going swimmingly (see #1). I'm moved in, have begun to unpack, and I'm exploring the town. Gainesville feels quite a bit bigger than Norman, and it's hard to know where you're going because you can't see around all the gigantic trees everywhere. I love driving and having Spanish moss hanging down over the road, and the whole town is honestly beautiful. So far the only disaster is that my dad and brother forgot to load the legs from my kitchen table onto the U-haul, so my table is currently resting on the floor until those get mailed to me. Tracy had the day off today, so we got to spend some time shopping with his parents and went out to lunch. He works the next two days, but then we may all make the trip out to the ocean. Not a whole lot else going on at the moment other than packing, but I'll write more when I can.