Tomorrow is my first day of student-teaching. Eeeck. To say I'm nervous does not begin to describe it. Not that I'm any less excited, or that I think I shouldn't be nervous, but I'd like to sleep soon. Hopefully getting some of my thoughts/feelings out here will help. As I sit here listening to tango music, my history with the school ...

Speaking of "lesson-plans":http://teaching.monster.com/training.... found a great blog: http://lessonplans.blogs.nytimes.com/ I've only read a few of the entries, but they are relevant. Definitely worth taking a look at if time allows. Time, oh time! But I digress, not surprisingly. As I'm sure you've learned, I tend to ramble, particularly when I'm stressed out, so please forgive me. Anyway, back to the topic at ...

As I walked through the doorway of school this morning, an eerie feeling overtook. Quiet. Not silence, but definite quiet in comparison to the typical bustle and chorus of student voices and reminders to get free breakfast and swipe in and take those hats off. The reason? PSATs, so seniors were gone for the day. In a way, the fact that ...

Is it Friday? I'm kidding, though today had its exorbitantly long moments. As always, there's plenty to talk about, but I'd rather focus on something one of my CMs said, and which I think is really important to consider both in terms of teaching English and my own perceptions/expectations. We were reviewing the early chapters of Brave New World and not ...

Last week was not good. Not at all. As much as I would love to dissect the week until I'm old and gray, I'm not going to do that. First of all, much of went occurred was personal, and therefore totally irrelevant to this space. Second of all, and to be completely honest, I've rehashed all of it more times than ...

First full lesson today. It went... ok. Not fabulous, and there are definitely things I'm going to work on (teacher voice; classroom management- I really don't think I heard the cell phone!; hand-outs, timing), but I got the students engaged. That counts for something, right? Right? The opening discussion was actually pretty good, I think. I managed to keep it on ...

1. It never hurts to butter up your supervising teacher. Bringing them a treat every so often will get you a warm spot in their hearts. 2. Ask your supervising teacher if he/she wants you to share new strategies that you learn in class. Maybe that will give you something to discuss and learn your teacher’s view on that strategy. 3. ...

Dear Julia- I am student teaching now. In college we learned many ways of designing lessons. The problem is the school I am student teaching at is very rigid in their lessons and utilize just a few books. These books come complete with LOTS of worksheets. Creativity is very limited as it is required that these text books are followed to ...