Tag-Archive for ◊ school ◊

19 Jan 2008 almost time to enter the real world
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thursday, january 24 is my last day of student teaching (with students–i’ll go in friday to help finish up grades and stuff like that for the end of the quarter)! i can’t believe i have only 3 days left, and one of the days is a field trip!

david starts his “real job” next week, and when i’m done student teaching, i’ll continue working at ae while all my licensing stuff is going through. hopefully i can start subbing soon and i’ll be looking for long-term sub positions for the end of the school year.

13 Aug 2007 all done!
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I finished up my last official class on Friday! I will be taking one class this fall while student teaching, but it only meets 4 times during the semester (it’s a class where we basically just make our electronic portfolios for certification). It’s about time I’m finally done with school!

24 Jul 2007 my life in fast-forward
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Since I haven’t posted in forever, quick recap of my life this summer:

end of May-beginning of June: Social Studies class. We played for 3 hours a day & had to write lesson plans due the next day. As with all my methods classes, easy A.

June: no class! Kristin & Marie came to the Cities for Leah’s wedding June 23, & it was lots of fun to see my friends again!

1st part of July: Exceptional Child class. Take notes for 3 hours a day–so fun. I ended up with 70 pages of class notes (handwritten) & almost 80 pages of book notes (typed). Lots of tests–my first grad class with actual tests! However, I discovered that no sleep=better grades! We had our Back-To-School floorset the weekend after 4th of July, so that completely screwed up my sleeping schedule. Working until 1:30 am is great when you have an 8 am class!

Middle of July: my store is getting a remodel & expansion…finally! I spent the last week of my Exceptional Child class taking 2 tests, writing a paper, & making a brochure, along with packing up the backroom at work for our move to our temp location, trying to get everything organized for the move, & attempting to get through as many boxes of shipment as possible to put on the floor since we have almost no stockroom in our temp store. Also, Heidi’s bridal shower & David’s parents’ block party. That was amusing–the cops came. We thought it was to arrest the neighbors or something neat for shooting off fireworks, being drunk, & letting their children run around. However, it turns out they just had nothing better to do so they decided to come visit the neighborhood.

This week…(technically last week, I guess) 7th Harry Potter book out! I stood in line for 10 minutes on Friday morning to get a wristband to hold my place in line (1st 300!) to get the book that night. After eating sushi, David dropped me off at Borders about 11:30 so I could get in line for the release. I got to jump ahead of the majority of the people & had my book before 12:45! Officially this week, now, my family’s vacation at Weslake. However, since David & I both have class, we were only up there for the weekend (where I read my book). I started my 3rd & final summer class, Psychology & Pedagogy of Literacy, today, along with finishing getting our temp store set up–the next couple months at work cannot go fast enough. Our current location is gross. The top third of the walls are painted lavendar, lime green, & mustard yellow. Ew. And it’s carpeted, so we have to vacuum. And we have neat plywood, shower-curtained fitting rooms. This BTS season will be amazing. Or not. This weekend is a college friend’s wedding, then Tim & Heidi’s in another 2 weeks. Then we’re done with weddings for the summer, only to begin again in the fall for Kristen’s!

23 May 2007 social studying
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I started my 1st summer class this week. I’m glad that I’m now ~25% done with the class (it’s every day for 3 weeks), but everything’s due on top of everything else–we have one week to write three social studies lesson plans! Of course, in most of my other classes, the lesson plans were due in a 1-2 week time span, but we had a week between each class that we could work on them.

I got all my final grades back from last semester. I was impressed with myself. I was expecting an A- in one of my classes, but I got an A in it, so all A’s for Sarah! (And that’s with my overloading and taking 16 credits–5 classes–instead of 12-15.) I also had two teachers ask if they could use my work as examples for future classes!

Well, I had best get back to my article-reading…2 articles about performance-based instruction & assessment for tomorrow!

15 May 2007 done! (for now)
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Well, I am done with spring semester. Now I get this week off, then I start my first summer session. Hooray!

For Language Arts, I had to make a photo essay documenting my experiences at the school, which I would post if I could, but I can’t because it has pictures of the students. I was at a normal school this time. :) Miles, from church and Confirmation co-leader, is the principal there, and I was with a third grade class. I have decided I like “normal” schools and students better…I can handle kids in the suburbs better than inner-city schools!

17 Apr 2007 experience of the field
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Since it’s been about a month, I might as well post something. I don’t really know what…

Last week I started and finished my 10 hours of math field experience. I was with the 6th graders from last semester. I like that class. Maybe I can be with them again for social studies in May; we’ll see.

This week I do science with the 5th-7th graders at the crazy school. Should be interesting.

I have also completed 6 hours with 3rd graders at a school in Eagan. I’m doing reading and language arts there. They are a lot better than the crazy third graders I was with last semester!! They’re really cute too–they all see me and say, “Mrs. Helfinstine, Mrs. Helfinstine, come look at my eggs I colored! Come read my sentences! Can you write ‘fascinating’ in my book for me?”

Ummm, anything else? Oh, I got an essay back today with the comment “DELIGHTFUL” on it. I wasn’t aware that essays could ever be considered delightful, but I guess I’m just that good. :)

Back to laundry and all that fun stuff!

18 Mar 2007 “crystal” words
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In my Language Arts class we did a lesson on revisions. The point of it was to change “tired” words to “crystal” words (crack open a geode to show students how it’s pretty inside). We had to work in pairs to rewrite a boring sentence. Ours was “The roller coaster was scary.” Here’s our version:

The seven-story roller coaster with the hairpin turns, corkscrew twirls, and 50-foot drop rushed the unsuspecting victims through a jetstream of ice cold water, forcing even the bravest souls to scream in terror at the imminent loss of life and limb.

Our teacher and everyone else in our class were very impressed. Yay for us.