Catching up...

I had every intention of writing several times on my blog this week, instead of just giving one large weekly update, but it just didn't happen. Sorry. So here's to "bulk blogging"...

I finished Methods this week! I had my final exam (a presented lesson plan) on Tuesday. I actually finished creating my lesson plan on Sunday and found myself to be bored out of my mind on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because I usually have so much to do. My finial went well and I got an A on it, but I have not yet received my grade for the class.

Monday afternoon I went for a walk around a lake and read a book for enjoyment because it was such a nice day. It was weird not having anything to do.

Tuesday I had Destino. I made Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies (a childhood favorite) to take to Destino because I had so much free time! After Destino I went out for Sushi with Allison (roommate), May (resident from last year), and Jen (methods classmate) to celebrate Jen and my completion of Methods. Sushi Blues in Raleigh has half-off sushi on Tuesday nights AFTER 10pm. Allison, Jen, and I were all falling asleep by the end of our meal because we are all on teacher schedules!

Wednesday I still went to methods class to watch other students present their final projects. Then Wednesday evening our methods class had a pot-luck to celebrate our completion of our Methods class.

Today (Thursday) I had my first official day of Student Teaching. It went well. I'm currently "team-teaching" with my CT, so each of us do an activity or two during each class periord. I love my first periord (level II). They are quiet, stay on task, and still participate. My third periord (level III) are a challenge. They love to socialize and talk, and I get them right after their lunch when they seem to have lots of energy (they get to go off-campus for lunch). This is also my largest class (35 students...yuck!) which does not help. Then I have my sweet fourth period class (level III). They are clamer, usually on task, and attentive.

Tomorrow, I will be teaching a legend to my level III's and then doing story books with them. In level II we will be playing a fun game to practice our reflexive verbs. Also, my level II's are reviewing clothing vocabulary, so tomorrow I'm wearing a coat, scarf, jeans, boots, sweater, jacket, tie, gloves, blouse, t-shirt, bathing suit, scocks, belt, hat, and maybe a few more things, in layers. At the beginning of the class I'm going to dance to techno music and take off the clothes as they call out the names in Spanish. Sort-of a VERY APPROPIROATE version of a strip-tease, that embarrases me, wakes the students up, and helps them learn the vocabulary.

Tomorrow night I have a Barn Party with Campus Crusade for Chirst. Their will be hay-rides, corn on the cob, mechanical bull riding, line dancing, ect. Saturday morning I'm playing in the Mi Familia soccer tournament on the Destino team and then we are having a Quesadilla party on Saturday afternoon.

I think that's about all!

Week six, or so...

I'm sitting here watching the season premier of Grey's Anatomy with two of my roommates (Rainna and Amanda). I don't usually follow seasons of shows on television, for time's sake, but I guess if other people are watching it, I might just get suckered in!

This week's short re-cap:
-I went to the NC State vs. Gardner-Webb Football game. I tailgated with friends at the Campus Crusade for Christ tailgate last Saturday. We ate BBQ, hush-puppies, baked beans, and banana pudding.
- I got the Flu Shot
- I've been working on my schedule for next semester (I'm trying to take a graduate course)
- I've been looking into graduate schools (mostly Appalachian State in Boone) where I will study Spanish Education. I am deciding if I want to go full-time for a year and two summers, or try to complete graduate school while going to school part-time and teaching high school Spanish part-time (hopefully in the Asheville area).
- in Destino we had Pastor Grabriel Angles come and speak with us. He is a pastor in a local Hispanic church. We had 18 students in attendance and about half boys, half girls! (last year we mostly always had just girls)
- Tonight I ate dinner with some friends and then went with them to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting.
-Friday and Saturday of this week I am required (for my methods class) to go to the FLANC Conference (Foreign Language Association of North Carolina). The conference has lots of GREAT foreign language teachers that offer seminars on everything from "Songs in Spanish for learning grammar concepts" to "games in the foreign language classroom" to "Engaging students", etc. The teachers teaching the seminars are fenomenoal and I'm excited to network with other Educational professionals and meet other teachers.

Yay for sunshine today!!!!

FLES (pronounced "F-less")

FLES (Foreign Language in the Elementary Schools) is something I have recently become a huge fan of. I've always liked younger children, but never thought I would want to teach elementary school....however, these past few days I've felt differently on the subject. I've been teaching/helping in Senora Turco's class at Green Hope Elementary school for the past three days. Because I am K-12 certified I have to spend time teaching in each of the grade levels. My days have been filled with songs, games, excitement, ethnusicatic kids, hugs, smiles, more singing, kids wanting to hold my hand and sit in my lap, kids wanting to be in school, and of course, more songs. I have loved it. Each day Mrs. Turco sees a Kindergarden, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade class. The school has five classes of each grade level, so each class gets Spanish once a week for 40 minutes. Essentially Mrs. Turco repeats her days five times each week (what SIMPLE lesson planning!!!). Also practically nothing is written in a FLES classroom...it's all verbal (half the students can't even read in English yet anyway). Today we played musical numbers with the kindergartners to learn numbers in Spanish and used PICTURE dictionaries to create really cool family trees with the 4th graders. I play all day!...and I love it.

The great thing about teaching a foreign language in general is you can be creative and play even in the high school level...because they too are learning basic speaking skills; but sometimes it's just harder to get those high schoolers to be excited about singing little songs and doing the hokie-pokie in Spanish. One great thing about high school are the relationships you can form with the kids...slightly different then the relationships you can form with the younger kids.

I'm not saying I've made a life altering decision to switch to elementary school, I'm just saying it's been refreshing and fun to be part of these past few days and I'm glad my licensure is K-12 so that I always have the option of teaching any level I choose. For that I am thankful.

desk, race,birthday, and PICTURES

These are pictures of the really awesome desk my dad built for me. It's perfect in my room!





Let's see....

I went home again this weekend to run in the Asheville Citizen-Times Half-Marathon. It was AWESOME. I felt great and enjoyed every minute of miles 1-12. Mile 13 was not so enjoyable, but I loved the race and I'm so glad I did it. I would definitely like to do more in the future and as of Monday I have started on a full marathon training plan that has me ready to run a marathon in December. I'm not sure if I will be able to stick to it with student teaching. I would have the time, but I won't be able to run before school (4am=insanely too early) and soon it will start getting dark around 5:30pm...so we shall see. I rested Sunday, ran 5 miles yesterday, and today I ran 3 miles and did some sprint work. My legs did feel pretty tired today. This evening before Destino, I went and swam for 45 minutes. If felt good to give my arms a little work out.



















I was having problems with blisters on my feet. I attributed it to increasing my weekly running (which is adding to the problem) but I got new shoes on Saturday and I LOVE them. They don't rub where my old shoes rubbed. The lady at the Jus' Running store where I buy my shoes thinks I was running in a shoe that was a size too small. (So, I'm guessing my race time would be like 15 minutes less with my new shoes...haha...just kidding!) I also bought some running socks (basically non-cotton) and that has helped reduce friction which causes blisters.

(This paragraph was more for my mom and grandmothers who love me and were concerend about my feet.)

While home I also got to celebrate a friend's birthday. We had a nice celebration for Rico (who also ran in the race with me) and I made him a homemade white chocolate cake with white chocolate iceing.

virus,labor day, high school, race, desk...but no pictures....sorry!

My poor computer got a virus so it is currently at the NC State Help Desk being worked on by a bunch of Asians! I have full confidence in them getting the virus off my computer. Until then, they have loaned me a laptop which is great, but I have none of the pictures that I was going to include in my because they are on my poor computer...so you will just have to imagine visuals as you read.

I went home for labor day weekend. It was not laborious, which was nice, and I did get to see lots of friends and do lots of things. I had a four day weekend her in school and it was laborious, which was not so nice. I had lots of homework. I spent Wednesday observing at Panther Creek High School and instead of staying the in class I will be teaching I went and observed the other four Spanish teachers in the school (there are a total of five). One of the teachers I observed was the FLANC (Foreign Language Association of North Carolina) Teacher of the Year last year. She was AESOME! I observed her teaching her AP Spanish class and her Level I Spanish Class and she was great at both.

Tonight (Thursday night) I had parent-teacher/open-house at Panther Creek. I met most of the parents of the students I will be teaching, which was nice. It was weird being a "teacher" at one of those open-houses.

I go home to Asheville again tomorrow (Friday) because I have my big 1/2 marathon on Saturday morning. I'm really excited, because I love races and the atmosphere at races, but I'm really sad it's here. It seems like the last four months of my life I've been training for someting (either a triathlon or a running race) and this is my last planned race of the year. After this Saturday I have not "scheduled" to work toward. Also, this week has been really weird because I am "resting" for the race so I have only ran a total of 6 miles this whole week (2 miles every other day)...I feel really guilty and lazy, but according to my training schedule that is what I'm suppose to do. So, I'm really excited for the race so I can run a really long way, run hard, and feel that burn in my legs and lungs!

I also have a really really cool addition to my room (I will post a picture soon) of a beautiful desk! My dad made me a perfect, dark-wood desk with a drawer to go in my room. I didn't want to buy a desk and all the desk we had at home were either too big or the wrong color...so he just made the the perfect one. (I'm sitting at it now!). I looks great in my room and fits perfectly. Thanks, Dad!

One week down and many more to go :)

This was a good week. I got to meet all of my students...ALL like 110 of them (in only three classes!). I did a little "get to know me" lesson for each class speaking only in Spanish using props like my bike helmet, an apron, etc. when talking about things I like to do. Then I quizzed them to show them that they can understand more than they think in Spanish. If they answered the question right I gave them a mechanical pencil.

We had our first Destino meeting of the year and we had 5 new (all Hispanic!) visitors. How exciting. After the meeting we all went to the State men's soccer game on campus. Tomorrow (Friday) we have our Mi Familia (Hispanic organization on campus) cookout. I'm excited to get to socialize with my Latino friends from State!...and get to know the new Destino members better.

On Saturday I am volunteering for Fiesta Del Pueblo. It's an annual cultural festival that has live music, food, and all sorts of advocacy and educational programs for Hispanics. I am volunteering through Mi Familia with the Justice Fair. I'm excited because there is always good food, dancing, and lots of Hispanics!

I got an A+ on my FLES (Foreign Languages in Elementary Schools) Lesson presentation and written plan in my methods class!...which I was super excited about. I really really enjoyed doing the lesson (see previous post for details) and was very pleased with the grade. ...who knows, maybe I'll teach elementary school one day...but then again, maybe not.
I am also finding my methods class to be VERY beneficial and to the point. I wish that all of the education classes that I have taken previously in college had been so beneficial and relevent.

I've been sticking to my 1/2 marathon training schedule really strictly this week. I have even passed-up some late night social events so that I can get up early and run. (Normally, this would NOT be typical for me, but it's crunch time now because the race is only 2 weeks away...yikes!) I am going to try and run 11 miles in the morning. ...good luck to me!

Back in the Swing of Things

Now that I'm pretty settled into Raleigh I suppose it is time for me to get back into the grove of blogging....

I have decided that I LOVE my apartment and apartment location. I am two minutes from I-40, ten minutes from a newly renovated Super-Wal-Mart, ten minutes from Target, five minutes from school, and it's super easy to give directions too. I also love the layout, having my own bathroom and large closet, and I like my clean, organized, and respectful apartment-mates.


















































I have decided that I DON'T like riding my road bike in Raleigh. I road this morning for an hour and a half and it was super annoying. Every time I found a good two lane country road it led me straight to a large intersection. I asked some other bikers that I saw where was a good place to ride and they gave me some suggestions that I will try next week. I do however live about five minutes from a lake that has a five mile loop around it that I also LOVE running on.

I am an official "employee" (unpaid, that is) of Wake County as of yesterday when I went down to central office and got my teacher ID badge. I took a really good picture (YAY!) and I can now get into any Wake County sporting event free!....I saw this as a win/win situation (minus the "unpaid" part).

My roommate, Allison, and I went to the local farmers' market this morning where I bough some peaches and a green pepper. As for food, I have been cooking in large quantities and then eating off that particular meal for several days. Last night I cooked some rice and mixed vegetables in "sofrito" (a Puerto Rican classic of cilantro, onion, and garlic that they use to flavor about everything they eat). I also grilled some chicken that I like to have around for salads or to add to my rice.

In Destino news.... Last week we had a leadership meeting to begin planning for the year. In addition to Holly (our Campu Crusade Coach) we now also have Justin. Justin graduated from State in 2004 and then worked in Argentina with Crusade for 4 years. He should be a great addition to our leadership group. Also, tonight we are having a SURPRISE going away party for Ekaterina who is leaving us for a 9 month intership in Georgia. We are going to miss her!


(Ekaterina pictured here....)












I am enjoying my methods class (a 7-week "teach you how to teach" class). I'm finding it informative. We are currently in our FLES (foreign languages in Elementry schools) section. All of us are certified to teach kindergarten through 12th grade so we spend time studying each grade level and specific teaching techiniques. Yesterday I had to teach my Elementry School Lesson and I LOVED it. The idea in FLES is that you create a content specific lesson and through focusing on the content the young children just pick-up vocabulary and grammar. In FLES you can't just write notes on the board because the kids can't even read yet. So you just speak to them in Spanish the whole time and you have to be very repetitive. I had an abosolute blast teaching my lesson. My content focus was "patterns" and my grade level was 1st grade. Through my lesson, in addition to learning how to complete patterns, the kids were able to learn the words (in Spansh) for pattern, circle, square, triangle, boy, girl, green, blue, and red...and they took ZERO notes. I'm glad I will have the option to teach young children because I really did enjoy it.


(Pattern artifacts picture here....)















So, if you made it to the bottom I give you a "star"! (because teachers are no longer permitted to give out candy in Wake County.....LAME!)