student teaching

Um, hi blog and small blog audience. It's me, Danielle. I don't know if you remember me, it's been a couple months...

November and December went by fast and slow being home. I didn't have a job or much of a routine. I watched the entire series of the Vampire Diaries and kind of got obsessed with that. I hung with homies. I reacquainted myself with good old 'merica. I definitely will always love Argentina and there are times that I miss it and aspects about my life there. BUT, there's no place like home! I love my family, friends, and country. Studying abroad has given me a whole new appreciation for them. :)

January I moved back up to college and jumped right into student teaching! Literally. My supervising teaching was sick off and on the my first week there, so I taught with and without her right off the bat. It has been an awesome and challenging experience. It's difficult to have all the responsibilities of teaching without all the authority and control sometimes. It's also difficult to control crazy student behavior. But, you know what? I love it. A lot. I'm learning a lot. I've improved a lot.

I'm not living on campus this year. I live super close in a little 3 bedroom house with 3 other housemates. That's been cool:) I'm really pleased with the way I planned out my college career and how my senior year has worked out. Because I don't even really feel like I've attended Grace College at all this year, haha. First semester abroad in Argentina, second semester student teaching. I don't go to chapel or am on campus hardly at all! Oh, except for my tuesday night senior seminar class.

Speaking of my senior seminar, with that came my huge, final, culmination of college work project. At Grace it has a really creative and riveting title: The Senior Project. It's a unit that we planned, taught, and did everything for in student teaching. It contains 7 sections: contextual factors, learning goals, assessment plan, design for instruction, instructional decision making, analysis of student learning, and reflection and self evaluation. We had to write a 20 page narrative over each section (mine was 23), include several charts about what we did, make graphs of student learning (I made 7), include all the material used in-class, track the progress of a low, medium, and high achievement student, and organize all of this in a three ring binder. PLUS a 20 minute oral presentation with a powerpoint. It was intense. I had no life beside teaching + this. The pictures you see in this blog were used in my powerpoint :).


I remember when I first started student teaching, it was hard enough just to adjust to a full 7am-4pm schedule. College spoils ya! And Argentina spoiled me even worse! Plus planning and grading. Plus my senior project. But, I finished that this past week. I presented on tuesday and I think it went pretty well. I was nervous and there were a few sections I wish I could have gone more in-depth on, but I'm proud of my efforts. I worked REALLY hard.

Now, my student teaching is split in 2 parts. My first half is near my college at Warsaw Community High School and then my second placement will begin in mid-March at Lawrence North a school closer in Indy. I'll be living at home and commuting to LN. I'm excited to continue the adventure and continue to get experience. I know I need it to be the best teacher I can be.

I do love teaching. It's a lot of hard work, which has been surprisingly enjoyable after such a lazy two months at home after Argentina. I love the people-aspect of it. I love the staff I've been working with. I feel really blessed. Really stretched and at times stressed, but honestly, I'm relishing in every second of this. God's bein' real good to me lately. Challenging me and filling me and emptying me. It's good to feel like such a tool all the time. Lol, tool. I'm starting to feel kindof terrified of what the future holds and praying I'll be able to find a job easily (planning on starting that hunt next month). OH! And this whole blog has been brought to you by A SNOW DAY. It's going to be another three day weekend (last weekend we had Monday, Presidents Day, off).

So I hope you are doing well, dear blog-reader. Also, I want to apologize for any neglect you've felt from me, I have honestly been busier than I have probably ever been in my life. So hmu now, k? ;) besitos!