Miss me?

I've been incommunicado for a few days. This trend might continue as this semester, as expected, is a killer. There is so much work that I've had at least, oh, two nervous breakdowns this week already. It's loco.

But there is good in it too. I'm interning in another 5th grade class this semester; this time in a bilingual classroom. Right now they're in the English phase, but soon it will be Spanish only. I'm nervous about that! At least I'll be in the same boat as the kids! Today I did my first read aloud assignment - and it is more complicated than that sounds. So much theory and purpose behind each and every little lesson a teacher does... You who think it's all coloring and playing have no idea!

My internship teacher is AMAZING. She is not only a bilingual teacher, but she's also the part-time assistant principal as well as an ASU professor for the night program teaching the same classes that I'm taking during the day. I don't know how she does it. She is very helpful and supportive and gave me a lot of great feedback on today's lesson.

This semester's focus in on literacy; I have reading methods and writing methods courses and in conjunction with those classes we work with yet other students (not the ones at our internships). I have three reading buddies and two writing buddies. I have my first reading lesson due on Tuesday. This entails a written lesson plan, artifacts (those zap my will to live), and actually doing the lesson. What are artifacts? Don't ask. It involves creativity, and I can't be creative on demand. I will have at least one if not two lessons per week ON TOP of all the reading, writing, assignments, internship, etc. It's nuts. And fun. And overwhelming. And lunacy. And I paid for this torture.

So that is why you haven't seen much from me this week. But I will have a lot of tales from the dark side, I'm sure, from this crazy semester about my classes, my various strange classmates, my kids, and who knows what else.