Clouds: The new form of classroom management

I know I haven't written a post about my school yet, and it's coming, I promise!  But I want to get past the "I'm a visitor" stage so I can really let you know what the school is like from the teacher's perspective!

I will tell you that my mentor teacher has been really nice so far, and I can tell I'm going to be extremely busy.  I'm going to (eventually) be teaching four different levels of Spanish: Spanish 1, 3, Spanish Speakers 2, and AP Spanish for 6 straight periods except for a lunch break, since my planning period is the last one of the day.  Out of the 6 classes I will be teaching, 3 of them are made up entirely of native Spanish speakers.  I haven't quite decided if this is one of those situations that will start intimidating and get easier, or stay intimidating but be one of those experiences that's beneficial in the long run.  I guess we'll have to wait and see!

But that has nothing to do with what I wanted to share about today, so here goes...

Obviously, the weather has been great in Florida so far.  Yesterday was cloudy, but other than that it's been sunny, clear, hot, the whole enchilada.  So my classroom, even though it only has 2 fairly small windows, gets a lot of natural light.  So much that we ended up partially closing the blinds today because students were complaining about the sun in their eyes.

So later this morning we were in the middle of Spanish 1, and my mentor teacher had to keep shushing the students, bringing their attention back in, etc because they were talking over each other, getting distracted, not listening, basically doing everything they shouldn't have.  But then, a huge cloud must have rolled in because suddenly it was as if we had closed blackout shades over the windows; the room went from bright to almost completely dark, save for the one classroom light we still had on, in an instant.  Every single voice stopped and their heads turned toward the windows so in sync that you'd have thought we choreographed it.

I couldn't help but laugh to myself, since apparently Mother Nature knows how to silence a class better than the rest of us.  But of course, even Mother Nature only managed to keep them quiet for a few moments...

I have arrived!

Now I have to be honest with you, I actually arrived in Florida 4 days ago so this post is just a tad overdue, but everything started basically the moment I got here so I haven't gotten a chance to write it until now (I know, excuses, excuses...).

But anyway!  The flight down was really easy except for the whole getting up at 4 am part.  But it was on time, there was very little turbulence, and in spite of all the families with small children (no doubt headed for Disney), I had at least 4 seats in every direction between me and all the yelling energetic little darlings, which I considered pretty good.

My host family came and picked me up, and we stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts on the way to there house which delivered some much-needed caffeine.  I'm pretty sure they thought I was a little off my rocker, because I was acting like I'd never seen sun before.  Seriously, every 3 seconds I made some comment in awe of the 75 degree weather, the sun, etc.  Then it was back to unpack, take a much needed nap, and get ready to go to a dinner with all the other interns and host families.

All in all everything in the "settling in" period went really well; the weather is phenomenal (I'm typing this outside in the sun!), my host family is extremely nice, and I'm getting along great with the other intern staying in the same house as me.  All in all, if the rest of my time here goes like the first couple days it will be fantastic!

Benefit #43 of going to Florida

Cloudy.  8 degrees.  Feels like -7.

Mostly cloudy.  62 degrees.  Feels like 62.

Now, the top one is the weather in my current location.  It's the dark, dreary, freeze-your-face-don't-take-your-hands-out-of-your-pockets off kind of cold.  There are a lot of things about Ohio that I'm going to miss, but the weather is most definitely not one of them...

The second description is the current weather in Celebration, where I'm going to be in less than a week.  See the difference?  I am definitely getting really excited!