goodbye ms. stanford

sadly today was my last day in 2nd grade for this semester. i will return to my young grasshoppers in january. i had a hard time explaining to them that i won't be back next week. they were a little confused. bless them.

on a more positive note i had a fantastic day. i am finally feeling teachery (i made that up) it only took 7 weeks. ha. you have those days where you know you made the right decision in your profession. and then you have the days where you're like, what did i get myself into. the good days definitely outweigh the bad :)

today was a good day. during math, my students blew me away with their smartness. we have been working on part-part-whole word problems. some students have struggled, but for the most part they all get it. my mentor teacher always makes time for students to share the strategies they use to solve problems. well this one student straight up amazed me. the first part, the students had to add 6 + 7,

easy breezy. but my mentor teacher still likes to check their strategies. 

well she called on this student and this is basically how he solved it. 

listening to the student explain the strategy was absolutely impressive. i mean 6 + 7 is simple, but you can not tell me y'all immediately thought to solve it like this?! It was very moving to see how these 7 and 8 year old's think.

that same student gave me the biggest hug after school and told me goodbye! *tear*

now if you asked me how yesterday went, well i couldn't tell you. seriously my brain is mush. but i do have a picture :)

as sad as i am about leaving 2nd grade, i am just as excited to be going to 5th grade! one thing i am nervous about is lunch. see 2nd grade has lunch at 11am and 5th grade is at 1pm. HOLY COW. i am just hoping and praying 5th grade has a mini snack time or something.

if i don't survive, my parrot goes to Lucy.

this post is dedicated to all PDS 1 students.

we will survive.

so everyday at lunch we vent about our classes. lately it seems like we might not survive. so one day, Liz started listing who gets what in her family. obviously Lucy is getting her parrot.

to cheer us up during lunch we take funny pictures. it keeps our spirits high. 

enjoy.

well the assignments are getting crazier and crazier, it seems like the professors are just giving us busy work. ironically they teach us NOT to do this in the classroom. hmm.

one assignment in social studies, we had to bring 3 items that describe who we are. 

here are my 3 items :)

my autographed book from Jim Lovell. if you're reading this and you do not know who Jim Lovell is, well we just can't be friends anymore. Jim Lovell is my hero. he was the commander of Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks played him in the movie). a few years ago i flew down to florida to meet him!

my family :) i love them.

im not adopted, in case you're wondering. 

last but certainly not least. my patrick doll. i am OBSESSED with greys anatomy and patrick dempsey. no i do not collect dolls.

since we were all stressed on thursday, a few of us decided to catch a movie and dinner friday night.

these are just a few of the amazing girls i am surrounded by on wednesdays and thursdays! i am so blessed to have them as friends.

that night we saw contagion. a little advice to future viewers: do not cough during the movie, unless you want the entire audience staring at you. epic fail.

the next morning i woke up bright and early for a mud run! this race consisted of 18 challenging obstacles. and when i say challenging, i mean challenging!! you should see the bruises on my legs! here a few pics from the race. thanks to Jennifer!!

the only time we were smiling.

i can just hear my dad yelling "drop your arms chelsea!!"

love you dad!

it is going to take me forever to clean these.

totally rocked the napoleon dynamite shirt :)

it's okay! i know where the fire blanket is!

no, PDS 1 didn't kill me. i'm still alive.

this past week has been the craziest week of my life (i say this every week)

but seriously it has. 

I knew this experience was going to be hard but i honestly did not expect it to be this exhausting. 

yesterday i slept from 5:30-8:30 and then went back to sleep at 11. a total of 10 hours of sleep...

now thats just crazy. 

since my last post a few things have occurred in my crazy busy life.

1. i had my first doctors appointment (made it 5 weeks without getting sick!)
2. i witnessed a 6 year old sing every word to Can You Feel The Love :)
   
3. i attended my 2nd and hopefully last T.A.I.R. conference.
4. i only completed 2 assignments. (i need to work on this)
5. i got to sit in on a staffing (pre meeting for an ARD)
6. i ate cafeteria food, again. it's still nasty.

since i was super busy this week, i failed to take pictures of myself (darn) so here are a few pics i managed to find on my phone. most of the pics are from class.

i have found that doodling wakes me up in the mornings :)

we always abuse the manipulatives in math. 

today in science, dave taught us about electric circuits.

from the picture you can tell we were making a closed circuit. the battery and wires were connected to an LED light. well, our battery was too strong and our light basically blew up. we tried our second light and this time we had ourselves a little firework show! (hint the title) needless to say it was a fun day in science!!

wednesdays are my favorite.

well the title speaks for itself! on wednesdays i have my two favorite classes, ELAR and Science!! today in ELAR we worked on two amazing assignments. 

the first assignment is a poem titled "I AM" 

we were given a template where we had to answer questions about ourselves. after we finished answering the questions, we have to make a poem out of it!

this is the template with my answers.

and here is my ROUGH DRAFT.

no judgements.

I AM

 I am beep beep,

As I speed to class.

I am a fat meaty cow,

Where the staff at McDonalds knows my order.

I am 22 going on 30 in a silver Hyundai accent.

A futuristic, living in 2014.

I am a loveseat

Waiting to be used.

I am a recorder playing in the cornfields in Germany.

I am the greenest grass in the middle of a drought,

With a giant oak tree to provide me with shade.

I am a future employee of NASA.

You’ll see me on the moon.

I am afraid of growing up, because that means I’m on my own.

I am someone like you.

Behind my eyes is a world full of possibilities.

I have actually enjoyed this assignment more than i thought i would!!

the second assignment is a Writing Life Map powerpoint. we have to present our positive and negative experience in writing from elementary to college. this assignment was a little difficult because i really cannot remember my writing experiences in elementary school (not sure if this is a good or bad thing). but here is a sneak peak. im sure y'all will enjoy this little story...

haha :)

mean green, horton, crazy socks, and flying solo.

fyi: this is going to be a looong post. 

MEAN GREEN!

saturday was our first home game in the brand spankin' new stadium. since i (mom and dad) totally paid for it, i decided to check it out :) first off, i was expecting the bathrooms to be super cool like the ones in the business building. negative. they were just plain toilets. parking was a nightmare. we had to walk from the old stadium to the new one. but i did get a weeks worth of exercise in that day! all in all it was a pretty neat experience!

HORTON!

hooray! its college week at school!! everyday the students and teachers wear something different. monday was hat day. first thought: BUST OUT HORTON! well i did not get the memo that it was 'college/ball cap hat day' so try to picture me walking into the cafeteria with this huge elephant on my head while everyone is starring. i was just waiting for the pigs blood to fall on me. thankfully i had lots of people tell me they loved it and asked me where i got it. during our morning assembly the principal even mentioned my hat :) so i guess it wasn't THAT bad! 

i also got the amazing opportunity to eat cafeteria food (really i left my lunch at home). it was, well, cafeteria food. growing up i always thought the teachers got a special lunch from the cafeteria. nope. it's the same frozen steak fingers. 

 lesson learned: set your lunch out before you leave. (thanks dad!) 

CRAZY SOCKS & FLYING SOLO!!

today was crazy sock day! my favorite by far, mostly because i couldn't mess this one up and i got to wear my sparkly toms!

so i bet you're wondering about this 'flying solo' thing... well this morning i was greeted with "im leaving early for a doctors appointment and you're going to watch the class"

i can't even describe the emotions i was experiencing this morning. i was mostly scared, but a part of me was very excited. i felt like i was ready, the kids really know me by now and respect me. one student finally learned my name just last week!

well 12:30 came and the kids were all mine :) i had a blast flying solo, the kids behaved well. we had share time, where the kids read their stories. and then we read lots of books! it was a fantastic day :)

although i will say, car pick up scares me.

we're not in kansas anymore.

i gave in and joined the rest of the students and put a basket on my bike. 

thanks to ashley and paige for installing it for me & lizzy for the tools :)

i must add that during the installation we were serenaded by a guy playing his guitar.

it was quite lovely. i think.

my bike ride today was amazing! i applied all the new things i learned last week and it made for a smooth ride. im hoping by december i will be able to make it up oak without dying. i loved that i walked into matthews (education building) this morning and my friend liz looked at me and said "you rode your bike today!" im usually out of breath and looking rough at this point.

meet midnight the salamander :)

annie 'petting' midnight.

midnight was a quick lil' salamander.

today in science we got to play with salamanders :) our group named our salamander 'midnight' she was a beauty! that was about the best thing that happened today. for the past two years i have heard every horror story of PDS 1. since then, i have told myself 'wait and see, make your own judgements about it when you get there'. well the stories are true. i don't think i have ever been this stressed in my life! the assignments aren't hard, it just seems like the structure and communication are missing in our classes. i need due dates and rubrics. thankfully this past summer a very sweet friend taught me how to find the positives in every situation. 

so the positives of this crazy, stressful, and chaotic semester are...

1. this is preparing me for a crazy, stressful, and chaotic first year of teaching.

2. i am able to see how i don't want to teach.

3. this will only make me a stronger student, educator, and person.

4. i am learning how to manage my time. 

5. i get a whole hour off for lunch

as crazy as this semester will be, i am so thankful to get to experience with some of my best friends!

enjoy ;)

where am i going today?

i woke up this morning asking myself this question. i honestly didn't know if i was going to denton or frisco. pathetic, i know. im feeling a tad bit bipolar. 2 days a week im a teacher and then a student for 2 more days.

today was an absolute blur. not sure if it was because my privileges as a student teacher increased or because i wasn't sure which city i was supposed to be in. lets go with the increase of privileges.

things i did today:

1. gave the spelling test and graded them. (moving on up. whoop whoop)
2. picked the munchkins up from P.E. (by myself)
3. ate my HEALTHY lunch slowly.
4. worked a math problem with the class. 
5. finished 3 homework assignments. (praise Jesus)

the spelling test was somewhat scary because my examples of the words were horrible. for the life of me i could not think of sentences to use the words in... im still in the "i don't want the kids to think im weird" phase. i need to work on this area of my life. ha.

the math problem was pretty neat because my mentor teacher just handed it to me and said here ya go! no pressure chelsea. i didn't have to repeat math 1351 or anything. surprisingly the problem was fairly simple and was mostly review for the kids. i am starting to get to see how my students solve problems and it amazes me of all the different strategies they use.

i like to think big of my students, so i look at them as the future presidents, neil armstrongs, doctors, etc. it scares and excites me to know that they are capable of becoming something big in this world.

 yay for fall clothes.

so last week i did some very neat assignments but i purposely did not include them in my post. the adventure on my bike was long enough for one post. 

(front)

in my ELAR methods course we were given a blank composition and instructed to decorate it to describe us. i think i nailed the assignment perfectly.

(back)

this will be my writing journal for the year.

 

one of the first assignments in my journal was 'rambling writing' this is where we ramble for a minute about anything and everything. i absolutely loved this activity! here is an excerpt from my ramble..

"i had a pet dog for a week. my mom sent him away to a 'nice farm' because he destroyed a cat in our yard." 

 

true story, his name was shadow. random huh?! 

 

for my next assignment my professor read the book The Memory String by Eve Bunting. we had to recreate our very own memory string and describe each item on it. 

 

 isn't she lovely?

football helmet: the 15 years of being a coaches kid.

black/gold/white button: working at charming charlie where i met some of my best friends. 

pink dress: my mother dressing me in weird dresses. (love you mom) 

gold anchor button: the motto for my elementary school is 'anchored in excellence'.

blue honey bee: when Emma was born my mother officially became "Honey"

correction from 'it's a beautiful day' :

U2 sings Beautiful day, not Coldplay :)

sorry, my brain is mashed potatoes by 4pm.

so im apologizing in advance for any other errors you might come across :)