coming to an end

Last week was really long. Meetings meetings, and more meetings. And then on Thursday, I thought I didn't have a meeting, but then I did! I decided at the last minute to drive home last night and enjoy some time with my family and grade papers at my Mom's giant breakfast table with a never-ending cup of coffee on Sunday morning, which I'm hugely looking forward to.

Despite the exhaustion, last week was also really good. It's such a nice feeling to not be student teaching anymore, to have my own classroom with my own rules and my own procedures. It's nice to get to know kids from the beginning and it's really nice to feel my lessons start to flow effortlessly and to not feel so much pressure and anxiety every morning before a class starts. It hit me this week, "Hey, I'm actually kind of good at this."

I also finally got kids in my ELD class, which is both good and bad, I guess. I was hoping they would close the class if there were no Level 2s and give me some of the 9th grade overflow, but no dice. I have 10 kids in 4th/5th now and they're mostly really great. ELD is just a big committment though, and not one I was particularly excited or willing to make and now, of course, I have the Learning Center breathing down my neck about peer tutors and supplemental materials and it's just a lot more pressure than teaching mainstream classes. Fortunately, we're piloting a really awesome new curriculum that actually does a lot of the work for me, so lesson planning isn't as difficult as it was last year. It's just a long two hours in the middle of my day...

I'm reading Steven King's Cell and it's not nearly as good as I had hoped (nor nearly as good as Twilight, but I'm just going to have to shut up about that until spring at least). I also really need to get to work on my MA stuff, but after turning in WARP 1, I'm kind of burned out (not good) and I need to get back to research and data collection.

And now, I have to take the dog for a walk. It's nice to be home.