gracias

I know we're a couple weeks shy of Thanksgiving, but it occurred to me this week that it's pretty good to be me right now, and for that I am thankful. Barack Obama is the new president of the United States, I'm in school to prepare for my dream job (and I love AVID and tutoring, my jobs for now), I get to see my beautiful family (minus Andrew) every day, I've made great friends in my cohort and...they're still serving Pumpkin Pie Blizzards at Dairy Queen. You may hear me complain a lot about how busy I am, but life is good, praise God.

Next week and the week after, I will be teaching an Intercession class at Crosswinds. As part of our program, the English cohort split into groups and designed a short, fun course to teach to the 6-8 grade students there during their two weeks off (Crosswinds is a year-round school). My group (me, Molly and Rebecca) are teaching a course called A Midsummer Night's Dream: Revisited. Our class of 30 is going to read (slash summarize) the play, then the kids are going to put together some scenes that update the play to modern times. I'm really excited about it (and also terrified, but that's another story), and I'm hoping to get permission to post some of our video online so you can see what the kids come up with. If this is not a Shakespeare play you've seen or read, you really should. It's a favorite.

In other news, my student teaching placement is (finally) confirmed! I know I posted over the summer that I'd be working at Chaska Middle School, but I requested a placement closer to my house. Actually, I re-requested the preference submitted when I was admitted to the program (working with Mr. Knodel at Richfield Middle School, where I am an AVID tutor), but the placement people at the U have an endearing habit of hearing what they want to hear.

But anyway, I am now officially scheduled to begin student teaching in Mr. Leisen's 9th grade English classes at Maple Grove Junior High in March! I've met with him a couple of times, and I went in today to observe and help out with grading, and I think it will be a good experience. He's had student teachers before, and I can tell he will be supportive and try to help me learn the trade. He is, however, very much the "guy teacher," as in he's the coach, incorporates shooting baskets into his spelling assignments and calls grammar tests "Search and Destroy." I will learn a lot from his style, I think. I will be teaching while the class is working on a research paper assignment, "Romeo & Juliet" and another novel I haven't read yet called "Finding Laura Buggs." For now though, I'm just going in to observe for about an hour a week and get my bearings.