It's hard to believe but this is my last first day as an undergraduate! It was great to get back and see all the kids. I was pleasantly surprised to see how excited they were that I was back. Of course, they were full of questions. Apparently there was a rumor going around that I had spent the break in China so they were dying to know about my trip.
I met with my mentor and communicated a lot of the concerns I had about this upcoming semester. How am I going to be taking over the different subjects? Are we going to be able to set up a planning routine? Can we get some more formal feedback for the portfolios? It actually went really well and I feel a lot better about what's coming at me. I will be changing classes with my students every day and I will be taking over science and social studies first because of MSAs. The only lingering fear/concern I have is going to be how to make decisions about what to teach in Language Arts. She doesn't follow the curriculum guide to the letter because she has so much experience with it that she's rearranged a lot of it. Am I going to be able to pick up where she left off with that? I'm not sure that I'm ever going to be able to fully take over with that kind of decision making because I don't know what's already been taught, what students know, etc. I'm sure it will be fine but I like to go into things knowing that I'll be successful. Or at least knowing that I have the tools I need to be successful. I'm not quite at that place yet.