Some more perks!

Living in Florida definitely has a lot of benefits: sun, no snow, nice people, and the close proximity to really awesome places like Disney and Universal!

I went to Universal yesterday (for the low low price of practically nothing, everyone here seems to have connections...) for the first time.  We went to the Islands of Adventure half (there are 2 parks for Universal, who knew?), where the Harry Potter park is!  I was like a kid in a candy store there, the vast majority of the pictures I took were of this section of the park.  I drank butterbeer, watched a little boy choose his wand (or, in true Harry Potter fashion, watched the wand choose him) at Ollivanders, and travelled through the movies on a ride through the castle.  Seriously.  So.  Cool.

The rest was fun too, there were sections for Dr. Seuss, Marvel superheroes, Jurassic Park, classic cartoons like Blondie and Popeye, and Atlantis.  We ended the day at Margaritaville at City Walk, and overall it was definitely a fantastic day off (schools here had Friday off).

Last week was also the first full week of my taking over Spanish 1.  It went pretty well, although my students seem to have a real issue with the whole, "you need to do the homework" aspect of being in school.  I had to threaten them with extra homework and a quiz, and half of them still didn't do it...

All in all it was a pretty good start, though.  I'm having fun, getting to know all my classes (even the ones I'm not teaching yet) and on multiple occasions I've been asked where I'm from after speaking Spanish.  According to them I sound like I wasn't born in the US, which is always a confidence booster!

How do I respond?

Do you remember that show, Kids say the darndest things?  Well they probably could have added a high school edition.  Over the last few days I’ve overheard some really interesting comments, or been asked things that seemed to come out of left field. 

For instance, my Spanish 1 kids are obsessed with knowing how old I am.  Every day there’s another question trying to get me to tell them my age (quite frankly I don’t care all that much if they know how old I am, but my mentor teacher is big on them knowing and respecting those questions you just don’t ask people older than you).  Two of them decided that I must be either eighteen years old and therefore way too young to be here, or thirty and trying to hide my age.  The latter comment was quickly followed by, “well, you can’t be thirty because you just look way too young, so you must be twenty or something.”  I finally told them I was a senior in college, and they didn’t believe me!  They are determined to get me to finally admit that I’m still a teenager regardless of how many times I’ve told them I’m older than that.  I’m pretty sure I’d have to show them my license for them to finally get it (although knowing them, they’d probably accuse me of having a fake ID).

They also want to know my first name.  Now that I’m okay with them not knowing that, because that’s just part of that really important line between the teacher and the students.  But one student has made it his mission to find out my first name.  I didn’t point out that my visitor’s sticker (which I don’t wear anymore so I supposed it doesn’t matter) had my full name on it, nor did he seem to notice.  I finally told him that once they all manage to remember and call me by my last name, maybe I’ll tell them my first.  Maybe being the operative word.

I’ve also been asked:

“How much are they paying you to do this?” 

“Are you a dancer for Disney?  You look like one.”

“How do you know Spanish if you’re not Hispanic?”

(to other teachers) “Does she speak English?”
                                    “Does she speak Spanish?”

“Wait, so why are you here again?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Do you speak English?  Say something!  I want to hear you speak in English!!”

“Why would you learn Spanish if you already know English?”

“Are you married?”

“Will you bring me food every day?  I won’t do anything if you don’t bring me food every day.”

“Are you going to be boring?”

“So…are you going to be here every day?”

I have a feeling the questions are going to get better (or worse, depending on how you look at it) as time goes by and the students get more comfortable with my being here.  At least I know they’re going to keep me on my toes.

In other news, a girl accidentally stabbed herself in the thumb with a staple today.  A staple, might I add, that had originally been attached to her quiz.  Funny, I thought that kind of stuff stopped after middle school…

Just a normal, every day Saturday

This was my first full weekend in Celebration, and so we (a couple other interns and I) decided that we needed to totally take advantage of our location and that meant we were going to Disney!  We spent all day yesterday at the parks.  We left the house around 10:15, and didn't leave the last park until after 11, which led to getting to the car by almost midnight.

But let me tell you, it was awesome!  We hit 3 parks (EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom) and as many major attractions as we could which I thought was pretty impressive.  We pulled that off by power walking everywhere, and I'm pretty sure the only time we sat down was to eat lunch in the car.  Of course by the end of the day I wanted to trade in my feet for new ones, but it was totally worth it.

Throughout the day I:

                                             saw a Mariachi band in Mexico...

                                                       saw some more Mexico...

                                       checked out a phone booth in the United Kingdom...

                                                          saw Beauty and the Beast...

                                                                  visited Mater...

and about a million other things.  Obviously this isn't 12 hours worth of pictures, but it's a start!

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!

I'm back!!

Hello again!  After a really long absence, I'm busting open the blog once again!  I haven't been posting because I've been on summer break, getting through my first semester of my senior year, etc etc.  But as I was filling out my application to student teach, I realized that I'm going to have more teacher education stuff to post about soon!  So I thought I'd start with a little overview of what my next semester of student teaching (like, the real deal student teaching; not just a field experience!).

As you may or may not know, I go to school in a small town in Ohio, and always assumed that I'd be doing my student teaching in one of the schools around here.  But then I got a phone call from the man in charge of student teaching placements, asking me to please consider a different student teaching program they offer here at the university.  And long story short, after a lot of debate, I will be student teaching in (drumroll please)...

Florida!  I'll be teaching in the town that Disney built, and I couldn't be more excited!  I'm still doing paperwork and figuring out logistics so nothing is set in stone (other than the fact that I'm going!), but I'm in the process of making it happen!

I'll update with information as I have it, although as of now all I know is the town name and whose couch I'm crashing on as school before I leave for Florida.  But hey, it's a start!