Student Teaching!

Well, the time has finally arrived. I have started my student teaching! Sort of...

I say sort of because the kids haven't had their official "first day" yet, so I haven't started teaching but I am at my school and excited as ever! 

On Sunday night at 11pm I got an email from my instructor with my assignment (talk about last minute). There was some confusion about my registration but it all got worked out and I got a fabulous assignment. I am going to be teaching in the BYU lab preschool for the first block! I am ecstatic! Last semester our liaison asked which of us would be willing to teach in the preschool and I just assumed that everyone would love to, but apparently it's not highly desired by many girls. I'm still trying to figure that one out...

I said that I would be willing and that's where I was assigned. It is fabulous for so many reasons.

1. I am working with the same teacher that I did my 222 class with (the class where you are an aid in the preschool for a block). I worked with Mr. Brad which is the teacher I have been assigned to work with for my student teaching. This means there were no barriers on the first day and I didn't have to worry about getting to know him or having any problems. Mr. Brad and I go waaay back. Ha! Kidding. But I really respect him as a teacher and I think he respects me as well.

2. I have access to every resource I could possibly imagine! If you don't know much about the BYU lab preschool, just know this. It is a very nice school. They have every possible thing a teacher could want or need in preparing a lesson. I have access to computers to plan lessons, amazing teachers and aids to help me plan them, unlimited amounts of toys to fill the classroom with, hundreds (if not thousands) of books (for the kids and resource books for me), and not to mention every kind of craft supply  you could imagine. It's basically a let-your-imagination-run-wild kind of place! 

3. I am surrounded my amazing people. Not only am I working with the amazing Mr. Brad, I have Anne (the preschool director) who is a fabulous resource for anything and everything! She knows everything there is to know about children, teaching and that gosh darn TWS (eeew) so I'm so excited to be working with her. 

4. I will have so much time to plan lessons. Since I will be teaching preschool, the kids aren't in the classroom for a huge amount of time. The children are only in there for 2 1/2 hours. There is both a morning and an afternoon class but I have time before, in between and after to meet with Brad and my 222 students for planning and discussion. I also have Friday's to set up and prepare everything with my 222 girls for the following week (since the kids don't come on Fridays). (222 girls are the girls who are currently enrolled in the 222 class which makes them my aids)

5. And last but not least it is close to home and to Josh's work. Since Josh and I only have one car I was really worried that I would get placed at a school far away without another girl to carpool with and would be stuck with how to handle the car situation. But, Josh can simply take me to the school in the morning, go back home, go to work at 2, then when I get out around 4 I walk to Kneaders and get the keys from him and then pick him up at 10:30 when he gets off. It may sound ridiculous, but it's much better than making other people give us rides. We have it all figured out! Plus it's also way better than taking on a car loan. I think we'll manage just fine with one car for now.  :)

Of course working in the lab school will have it's "down" sides too. I put down in quotation marks because they really aren't bad things, just different. I've heard from many girls that working in the BYU lab preschool is much more intense. Since Anne does our observations and because she is so busy, she doesn't schedule her observations with us. She will just come and observe when she has the time. This means that instead of just writing 4-5 lesson plans for the lessons that we're observed for, I will be writing a lesson plan for every lesson I teach of every day and will be turning them in weekly to both Brad and Anne to be looked over. That's a lot more than the other girls, but nothing that will hurt me! It can only help.

We also put in more hours than most of the girls in the public schools. Rather than getting there 30 minutes before school and leaving 30 minutes after we have to be there an hour before school starts and stay until an hour after it ends. That means I will be at the school from 7:30-4:30 daily. Phew. It is going to be a long 9 weeks, but totally rewarding! 

I'm not going to lie, I already feel exhausted, but that's mostly to blame on the fact that I was on a horrible sleep schedule all summer. I closed most nights with Josh at Kneaders so we would get home at 11pm, eat dinner and then got to bed around 1-1:30. That also meant that we typically slept in pretty late. So, this switch has been a bit of an adjustment.

Long story short, I am so excited about the semester! It is going to be so rewarding and fun. I can't wait to get to know all 40 of my students and all 12 of my aids! I can't believe how blessed I am to get to be a part of these children's lives and to help them learn and grow! I love my major! 

 

I snapped this crazy picture of my classroom the other day at random. It's a horrible view and doesn't really show anything amazing about it, but it's a picture so I feel obliged to post it. This is the view from the front corner of the room. You can see part of the rug and some tables and shelves. Ha! Oh, and that huge mirror...that's a one way mirror. Behind that mirror is a booth where parents, other teachers and anyone else can sit and watch/hear everything that goes on. Freaky, right? That's why those big cones are hanging from the ceiling...those are speakers. I have to be honest, I always forget it's there. So if you want to come watch me teach...you can! :) But don't tell me you're coming....

Quite Possibly the Best Day of our Married Life Ever...

Last week was Josh and I's 3rd anniversary! Happy 3 years to us! Josh and I have a little tradition that we do. Every year we switch off who plans our anniversary and Valentine's Day. This year was Josh's. He made plans a few weeks before but kept them all from me. I knew we were going somewhere and staying the night and that's about all I knew...


Our actual anniversary was Tuesday but Josh's day off each week (during the summer) is Wednesday so we headed out of town on Wednesday morning. We drove up to Salt Lake City and started with some shopping at the Gateway mall in downtown. We love to shop. We bought this little number at the mall. We thought it was pretty funny.

After shopping Josh took us to the place we were staying. I really just expected something like a hotel. So boy was I surprised to see this!!

We stayed at this fabulous place called Inn on the Hill just north of downtown (up the hill towards the Capitol building). The name is perfect, we were up on a hill and the view from our room was absolutely breathtaking! When we arrived the sweet little innkeeper took us up to our room and told us that only like 2 other people were staying in the house that night so any room that was open we could look at. Of course we checked out ours first. It was amazing! It was up on the third floor. It had beautiful windows, a huge king bed, fun lights, a huge jet bathtub and amazing architecture. The ceilings were my favorite part! 

[view of our room from the bed...aren't the ceilings so cool?]

[the bed]

[the couch, wardrobe, and windows with the amazing view]

[the bathroom...by far the best bathroom in the whole house]

After checking out our room and being very excited we wandered around the rest of the house. I didn't take too many photos, but I snapped a couple with my phone. 

[cool stones]

[lovely tile]

The entire house was just beautiful! There were 2 sitting rooms and a game room with a big screen tv and a pool table. We had plans to play pool, but I'll explain why we didn't later...

[even the stairs were amazing!]

After we explored the house we went back up to our room to get ready for dinner. We got all dressed up and Josh took me to the surprise dinner downtown. 

[on the grounds of the inn]

[all dressed up]

[fancy]

[nice rump]

[josh loves dangle-y earrings so i went out and bought some classy ones for the night]

[he loved them!]

[water fountain on the grounds]

[smile]

The surprise dinner was at Melting Pot. If you haven't heard of this place, you are missing out. It's absolutely fantastic. It's a fondue restaurant. In the middle of every table is a burner and they bring out a pot and you do four courses. The first course is the cheese course and there a bunch of different cheese fondue dips to choose from. We chose the spinach artichoke one. It was so amazing. We dipped bread, chips, apples and vegetables in it. Yum! That was probably my favorite! 

After the cheese course is the salads. There is no dipping involved in this part, but the salad was yummy! After salad is the main course. They had chicken, beef, steak, shrimp and sushi style tuna to dip in the boiling oil. So the oil was flavored and the leave your meat in for a few minutes and let it cook and then eat it. They also gave us a bunch of dipping sauces for the meats which were so yummy. 

After the main course is, of course, dessert! We chose the classic chocolate dish which is melted milk chocolate with chunky peanut butter in it. We had cheesecake, pound cake, brownies, rice krispie treats, marshmallows, strawberries and bananas to dip in the chocolate. Talk about amazing. It sounds like a ton of food (because it is) but you have to cook your own main dish so you eat really slow. We also spent a lot of time talking and so our meal lasted a couple of hours. It was so much fun and talk about delicious!!! 

After dinner we went back to the Inn and took a couple pictures (since we looked so nice). 

They didn't turn out great, so we stopped. Haha

We headed up to our room and surprise, surprise, it looked like this! 

Josh had coordinated with our Inn Keeper and had candles set up all over the room and bathroom and there was even music playing. It was all so sweet. But I really wanted to get some pictures of the city before the sun set so we blew out the candles and headed for the balcony. It was such a beautiful night. The view, the sunset and being with Josh. 

But, just as I was stepping out onto the balcony, I missed a step and rolled my ankle. It didn't hurt too bad but as I sat there it started hurting worse and was starting to swell. But, we sat and talked and enjoyed the view anyways. 

Can you believe that view?! It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen!! 

After the sun went down we headed back up the room. My poor ankle was hurting so bad so we decided not to play pool. Josh went down and checked out a couple movies  and we laid in bed and watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was so funny. We also took a long relaxing bath in the awesome tub while we drank sparkling cider. The tub felt great on my ankle. We had such a fabulous night! I never wanted it to end. Unfortunately, I didn't sleep well that night. I got about 2 hours of sleep. I was up most of the night feeling incredibly nauseas. When we got up in the morning we were served breakfast in bed. Unfortunately I was still feeling so sick that I didn't get to eat any of my breakfast but it looked really good! :) We showered, packed up and headed out (since we both had to work that afternoon). 

[the last picture i snapped before we headed out]

We did stop in town for lunch though. We went to this Italian cafe and market called Tony Caputo's. We had been there before with my family and loved it so much we decided to go back. We got sandwiches and also got a bunch of cheese and meats from the market to make pizza! Yum! We are making it tonight, so I'll let you know how it goes.  

Despite spraining my ankle, being up all night sick and getting an un-welcomed visit from mother nature on Thursday morning we really did have the most fabulous time on our little night away. The B&B was amazing and beautiful and we spent so much time talking and getting to know each other even better than we already do! I love you Josh! Thanks for giving me the best three years of my life!!! Here's to eternity! 

:)

Finished Products

We picked up our Color-Me-Mine stuff on Wednesday! They all turned out really cute! 

 

[Joe's]

 [Karen's]

[mine]

 [josh's]

 

Make sure to click on Josh's plate to read the joke up close! It's a good one!