heart/love attack!

Dear Good Samaritan,

Your thoughtful gift of groceries on our porch today honestly could not have come at a better time. 

In fact, I was just telling Joel today that we needed to go grocery shopping this week

while thinking to myself that I had no idea when that would actually be possible.

How did you know that we are totally out of bread, fruit, and vegetables?

and know exactly what kind of bread we love?

and how we like our bananas?

(And, on the subject of bananas, they're so huge!

And tasty. We've already started on them.)

We were so so happy and thankful.

And we like the hearts all over the door, too. :)

Love, alisonmj

(sigh)

That moment when you are absolutely exhausted and want nothing more than to go to bed and wake up early to finish,

but know you have 150 kids, their parents, and two teachers depending on you to stay up and do it now instead, just in case you don't have time to finish in the morning.

There are no late assignments in this world, ladies and gents.

some helpful reminders

This weekend has been hard for me, student teaching-wise.  I'll most likely be the only one in the classroom tomorrow.  Plus, we planned to try a new kind of lesson and aren't sure how it'll work.  Plus, I'm getting observed tomorrow.  During my hardest class.

So, needless to say, there's been some overwhelm-age and some nervousness in our house today.  But tonight I was reading a blog I really like and found some great reminders.  Here they are, just in case you need some, too.

1. You are what you are and you have what you have, right now.  [Including knowledge.]

2. It's healthy to shed your tears.  The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.  And a smile doesn't always mean someone is happy.  Sometimes it simply means they are strong enough to face their problems [or hard things].  [I haven't been crying all over the place today, just so you know.  I just liked that quote:)]

3. Get out there and try!  Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson.  Win-win.

4. You have the capacity to create your own happiness.  A smile is a choice, not a miracle.  [Although it is my opinion that sometimes it's both.]

5. Emotionally separate yourself from your problems.  You are far greater than your problems.  And that means you’re more powerful than them – you have the ability to change them, and to change the way you feel about them.

6. Don't let others make decisions for you.  Sometimes you just have to live not caring what they think of you and prove to YOURSELF that you’re better than they think you are.

7. You're not alone.  Everyone has problems.

8.  Mistakes are important to make. 

9.  What others think and say about you isn’t all that important.  What is important is how you feel about yourself. 

10.  You are ONLY competing against yourself.  When you catch yourself comparing yourself to a colleague, neighbor, friend, or someone famous, stop!  Realize that you are different, with different strengths – strengths these other people don’t possess.  Take a moment to reflect on all the awesome abilities you have and to be grateful for all the good things in your life.

Latinos are awesome.

One thing I absolutely fell in love with in Mexico was the Latino hospitality/friendliness.  It's not just that they're hospitable - it's that, as soon as they meet you, they instantly want to help you with everything you have going on.  They remember you and love you, and that attitude never ceased to make me feel special. 

At my high school, there are more than 1,000 students but only about 100 Latinos.  It's interesting, though - due to our class schedule, my mentor and I have almost all of them in our classes.  I actually thought the school was majority Latino until last week.  As you might imagine, there are some who have lived in the U.S. their entire lives and there are others who have been here for less than a year.  Jacobo (name has been changed) is one such student.  But listen to how awesome this is.  So, Jacobo is a real social butterfly - loves to talk and gets along with everyone.  Today was his birthday, and guess what his Latino friends did!  They invited a bunch of his Latino friends and one brought a cake, someone brought pop or something, someone brought chocoflan, there were balloons, ice cream - the whole deal - and they gave him a big surprise party for lunch.  One of them even got special permission to leave school during the day to get some of the stuff.  How many people would do that?  They're an awesome group of kids.  They've proved to me once again how awesome Latinos are. :) 

a real live Corner Gas

Okay, so it's not quite as cool as Corner Gas, but it is pretty cool.

 

I discovered the coolness of Tesoro gas stations a couple of weeks ago as I was driving home from my student teaching.  Not only do they tend to have cheaper gas than all surrounding gas stations, but they also pump the gas for you!  And clean the front and back windows (and other ones, too, if you ask them to) while it's pumping!  It's kind of fun, especially because they offer and think you're crazy if you say no - you don't have to ask.  And because it's nice when it's freezing cold outside.  I always am left with one question, though.

What are you supposed to do in the car while they're working on the outside?

"A single executive is the fetus of a monarchy."

We watched a video in ESL History that said that.

It was definitely an unexpected use of the word fetus. 

I think that word is so weird.

I don't think anyone else noticed. 

student teaching

Yes, it has begun.  Student teaching.  It's fun but also exhausting, which is the reason for not having posted lately.  I've been taking notes, though, because there have been some cool experiences.  My goal is to post them as they come so I can be more on top of record-/journal-keeping, but here's a collection from the past couple of weeks.

I've been trying hard to learn my students' names, since there is friendship (and also teacher authority) in knowing people's names.  Cool experience #1 was a girl making the comment to someone at her table that "she's really good with names."  I had, in fact, hardly learned any names from her particular class - she heard me say the one or two that I either knew or had looked at off people's papers on their desks.  I think it still does something for the class environment, though, if everyone thinks you know their names.  :)

There was a test right before I started at the school.  Almost every person failed that test - as in, like, 20%'s and such.  I was the one who graded those tests.  Unfortunately for me, one particularly interesting and (at the the time) vindictive girl found out and wasted no time in making sure people knew that I was the one who had graded them.  Nevertheless, I was not too worried, because to be honest, I'm not terribly worried about being popular here, but I was a little nervous - I didn't know how much damage she could cause for me.  And as much as I didn't care if people loved me, I also didn't especially want her making enemies everywhere for me.  The next day, though, she came to the classroom after school and asked for help in preparing to retake the test.  A minute later, as another girl got up to ask my mentor teacher for help with her retake, Girl 1 said to "ask her for help instead.  She's better at explaining it, trust me."  Now, I'm not saying I'm better than my mentor, although I may have been for that particular girl.  The point is that she didn't hate me, now we're friends, and that was a somewhat monumental moment for me - the moment my students started to see me as a competent teacher.

Two students that are cousins were in after school making sure they were ready for the end of the term.  Because it was after school, when they talked to me, I spoke to them some in English.  We talked about getting married, what school to go to, how one of the cousins is brilliant.... just generally got to know each other.  It's fun when they start to see you as a real person instead of just a teacher :)

I saw one of my students at the grocery store! She's a bagger there. And she recognized me! I felt kind of bad because I didn't recognize her at all - it was just after a couple of days of student teaching and she sits in the back.  But it was still fun.

Yesterday we introduced a Powerpoint assignment that they'll be doing about families.  My mentor gave them an example using her family, and afterwards, they all also wanted to see mine.  Proving my theory once again that it's good to use examples from your own life - it's fun to see evidence of teachers' lives outside of school!