London and First Day Teaching

Hello one and all! I'm sorry I haven't written in a while but I have been one busy little student teacher the last few days. First, I'll post a few pictures from London and talk about the cool ITT trip. Oh, and for those who don't know (which may be everyone) ITT trips are trips available for the military and those on the base-and they do all kinds of trips. Trips all over England, other countries, specific sights and attractions, etc. One of the paraprofessionals (aid in a special ed classroom) had extra money from her husband's deployment that she needed to blow before moving back to the states and she decided to bless us! (They could only spend the money internationally). The ITT trip gave us transportation into London and dropped us off for our Jack the Ripper tour. Our tour guide was a 40-something man who was apparently a Ripper-ologist. Someone who studies Jack the Ripper and everything about him. And he has written a book about him. And has photographs that apparently no one else has due to a family friend. And he acted like an awkward drama kid that lives for performances. He was QUITE the character. Anyways, we were led to the exact locations of most of Jack the Ripper's murders and were shown lots of photographs from what the buildings looked like at the time to the victims- or what was left of them. Kinda gruesome at some points; I would't recommend looking up Jack the Ripper murder victims before bedtime. Luckily, I've watched a lot of SVU so I was fine. Afterwards we stopped at a pub for a quick pint, were then taken to Planet Hollywood to kill time time before the Ice Bar and honestly that was a bit pointless..but then we finally made it to the Ice Bar which was a blast!! 

 (Kim and me)

We were given these huge, warm, parkas/insulated poncho things because it was -5 degrees in there. EVERYTHING was ice. The counter, the pillars, the glasses, the seats. It was a lot of fun dancing around in those parkas and being in that environment.

 

Me, Stephanie (Western Michigan student teacher) and Kim

Melanie (Western Michigan student teacher), Stephanie, me, and Kim

Needless to say we had such a good time!! We could only be in the Ice Bar for 30 minutes due to it being so cold (literally, they kick you out). We grabbed some McDonalds (student teachers need to eat!) and people watched until the bus left. I am always in awe of the people of London. They are so effortlessly cool and well dressed. I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. The bus left London at 1 am and didn't get back to Lakenheath until 3 am so we didn't get back to our dorms until 3:30 am. Long but fun night!

OOOOk. Now what (some of) you have been waiting for: My first day of (really) teaching was yesterday. Jenn was gone due to being with friends in London so I had the class to myself!! Well there technically was a sub, but I did all the work. He literally did nothing. Well except reviewed math with the students. But otherwise, I was in complete control!! And the kids were wonderful as I knew they would be. They were very well behaved, obedient, and did their work. At one point in the afternoon there was an evacuation drill to practice if there was a threat on the school and I had to pick the students up from the playground and walk them across the street to this other building. I only said one sentence to them: Be quiet or I will give you a tally (in a teacherly, firm voice which I feel like I have almost perfected). THEY DIDNT TALK AT ALL. During the whole 15 minute drill. They didn't even look tempted to talk- while their peers from the other 4th/5th grade classes were whispering quite often. I have never been so proud and I received many compliments on how well behaved they are :) I was bursting with pride. So overall the day went well. I taught spelling (gave a pretest as well), grammar (compound sentences), read aloud (read 3 chapters out loud and we did sentence summaries together), science (reviewed terms), and computer lab (they worked on their science brochures). Not a difficult day but I was exhausted by the end of it. I learned that I probably need to work most on my time management..time got away from me at some points and I could have skipped some material and focused on other things more instead- but hey, hindsight is 20/20. 

Though Jenn is back I am still taking control of a lot of the morning stuff most days: morning routine, spelling, grammar, and read alouds; and I also do science in the afternoons. This week will continue being very busy as I am also working on a large unit for my senior seminar class (for OSU..yippeee). HOWEVER, I am going to PARIS this weekend!!!!! YAYAYAY!!! Nothing can bring me down!!!! I just have to tell myself I will be seeing the Eiffel Tower light up at midnight in a few days and I cheer right up :) You better believe there will be a tremendous amount of pictures from that. 

Here are two teacher outfits as I have been horrible at documenting them. One was from last week (the orange) and from today (green pants)

Yes, the skirt is a little wrinkled but thats after a day of teaching!

Had to add this one..Sorry for the dirty mirror and silly bathroom selfie. I just was proud of this outfit haha

And I'll leave you with two more pictures although this is from a little over a week ago. We all went to a local (Feltwell the town, not the base) pub to meet with a lot of the teachers and hear a local band play. 

There is 8 out of the 9 of us student teachers. There are 5 OSU and 3 of the 4 Western Michigan girls.

My cute little table of friends. Kim is beside me, Kali and Micaela are across from me. 

I hope this long and picture-filled post makes up for my short hiatus from blogging!!

Love love love