Hey, look! A blog.

So, as I am sure you know if you are reading this, I am student teaching in AZ and I am required to keep a blog as part of my little journey out here. All of my blogs will be on the Cornell Fellows website, but apparently they kind of suck at updating it since my post was supposed to be put up on Wednesday and it is now Saturday with no sign of it. Because of that, I have decided I will do a personal blog as well. This also gives me room to write about some things that might be not be applicable to the Fellowship blog. At any rate, here is my first post about my first week of school. I will post tomorrow about week two.

I arrived in Phoenix on Saturday night (July 31st) and was picked up by Katie Preston, a Cornell alumna that I will be living with for the first two months of my fellowship. We drove back to her house in Buckeye and had all day Sunday to hang out and become adjusted to life out West. Monday was my first day at Bales Elementary School. I met my mentor teacher, Jodi Chesbro, and a myriad of other teachers and administrators. Monday and Tuesday were spent setting up classrooms and in meetings. Monday was an exceptionally long day: I arrived at school at 7:30 am and did not leave until 8:30 pm. Monday night was meet the teacher night where students and parents come to the school in order to, as the name suggests, meet the teacher! 

Meet the teacher night was a little complicated because there are basically three different 8th grade language arts teachers. My mentor teacher, Mrs. Bjorklund, and myself. Even though Jodi is my mentor teacher, she technically is no longer the 8th grade language arts teacher. This year, Jodi is an academic coach, meaning she observes other teachers and helps them with their teaching. However, since she had a student teacher, she convinced our principal, Fred Lugo, to let her teach one class of 8th grade language arts. Mrs. Bjorklund is teaching the rest of the classes. Bales runs on a modified block system; they used to have nearly 2 hour long blocks, but some teachers were having classroom management problems with such long class periods. This year, they start the mornings with half an hour of home room and then 50 minute blocks. With language arts, you see the same group of kids twice a day: once in the morning and then once in the afternoon. So, you have the kids for a total of 100 minutes, but it is split up throughout the day. Eventually, I will take over both the morning and afternoon classes of Mrs. Bjorklund's homeroom. Anyway, this is the reason meet the teacher night is complicated because the students will really have all three of us as a teacher at various points throughout the year.

Wednesday was the first day of school. I was really nervous! By this time, I was really comfortable with my mentor teacher and was learning my way around the school pretty well, but the school changes once the students arrive. However, I really did not have a reason to be nervous because, at this point, I am only observing the students. Wednesday-Friday I pretty much followed the students around most of the day: homeroom, Mrs. Chesbro's class, Mrs. Bjorklund's class, math, and social studies. I have also been into a couple of other classrooms in the lower grades. Jodi really wants me to get a well rounded experience, so I will be observing all over the place. 

Overall, things are going really well and I am so happy to be here. Jodi is absolutely wonderful and I am pleased that I am getting to work with her. She definitely has really great advice and makes teaching look so easy, not to mention fun! It has definitely been a huge adjustment coming here in a couple different ways. First, I am adjusting from the easy life of summer to the busy life of a teacher, which I have affectionately dubbed "teacher mode." Normally, I would have a few more weeks of summer and then go into "student mode," but this a completely new experience for me. Secondly, I also am adjusting to life outside of the Midwest. The culture out here is very different and I am excited to learn more about life in Arizona. Along with that, I am meeting a lot of new people and making a lot of new friends. Plus, the people I am meeting will be great contacts after I graduate in May; networking is definitely an important part of being out here. 

For the second week of school, I am actually going to start picking up a few lessons and then I will be lead teaching on Thursday and Friday. Typically, student teachers will not start lead teaching for at least a month or a month and a half. However, Jodi has meetings on Thursday and Friday, so it makes more sense for me to start teaching earlier. I am definitely nervous about this, but I know that I am as prepared as I am going to get and I may as well just jump into teaching as soon as possible.  

To end this post, I have a few obligatory first day of school photos.

My legit (blurry) teacher ID. (I also have a teacher email!)

First day of school nerd.

In front of my school.

Classroom

Classroom again