Probably not the swine flu, but...

Boy was it a nasty 32 hours. Four of the five of us got it (mercifully the three year old was spared, so far!) but I really think I had it the worst. At the risk of treading into the Too Much Information zone, I was up two or three times an hour from 1am to about 7. Then it was about another 24 hours of not really being able to comfortably get out of bed. Ugh. No fever, though, and no other symptoms aside from the intestinal ones! So whatever it was didn't require a report to the health department. I had to call in sick, which meant I got to figure out how to get a substitute while panicking that a) it wouldn't be arranged in time and that b) I didn't really have any good lesson plans in place for the sub. I'm spending the rest of the weekend doing house chores and outlining next week's lessons!

happy graduation to us...

Yesterday I participated in the commencement ceremony marking the completion of my master's degree. (OK, my cohort and I are not quite there yet, but we're mere weeks from complete and got to walk anyway.) I have always valued higher education and am proud of this accomplishment; I'm even proud in advance of the good work this degree will allow me to do.
But.
There are no jobs. There is no money to go around. I am not qualified to be an RN or a long haul truck driver, and these are really about all my local paper is advertising for. Somehow my worries have been overshadowing my pride in a job well done. A Wall Street Journal article is highlighting the way the baby boomers have, well, basically ruined the country and maybe to an extent the planet for us, their children. Leaving school doesn't look so good when unemployment is this high. For about eleven months now, I've been second guessing myself, and it's only gotten worse as the year dragged on. Was taking out these student loans a good idea, when I could (presumably) gotten a job a year ago and been making money all this time instead of accruing debt and angst? Boomer commencement speakers this year are on record apologizing to this year's graduates for the world we're inheriting. As Judy Berman puts it, "too little, too late". Sure, there are individual examples here and there of baby boomers who I value and like (mostly my parents and one or two professors). As a whole, though, they've really done a number on us.
I'll be lucky to be working part time pumping gas after summer classes are done. I'm not exaggerating either. (Pumping gas is an actual job here in Oregon, btw). The glow of graduation day is definitely gone already.

The end is in sight.

Nine weeks to go and I'll have three fancy new letters after my name. The spring term is winding down; after one more weekend of probably sixteen hour days, my spring work sample will be done and turned in. Then we proceed to finish up with one action packed summer term. Then it's all over except for the worrying about finding a job in this economy. Substitute teaching never looked so good.

Last night we presented our portfolios to faculty (what I think of as a baby-version of a defense of dissertation for master's degree students). These huge binders exhibited work from the whole year so far, with a long and detailed list of specific accomplishments and professional traits to exhibit. The presentations went well, and I was really proud of my cohort. I would be happy for my own daughters to be in any one of their classes: they'll all make great teachers. We all will. I can't wait for my first for-real classroom.

And a big sigh of relief marks the vernal equinox

A few key points. The winter term has finished. I completed a 175 page work sample (sort of part 1 of my master's thesis- part 2 to follow in the spring term). I accomplished my research project on assisting students spiffy up their organizational skills, complete with cool graphs and charts. I finished the student teaching with the sixth graders, and only teared up that one time. I accomplished all nineteen credits, from Implications of Poverty to Human Relations to Special Methods in Science and Math to the aforementioned Action Research.

And here's the kicker: I still want to be a teacher! The winter term was full of twelve hour days, including many weekends when I had to leave the house to get work done. It was full of unwashed dishes and laundry. It was full of thirty distracted minutes a day with my kids. It was full of my husband getting really annoyed with me for being so busy and distracted and not asking for help enough! And then my car broke down! I certainly don't want to relive anything like the past three months, but I sure do still want to be a teacher.

So spring break is here. The weather is nice, sunny-snowy-sunny. I've been spending all day every day with my beautiful daughters. We made banana bread. We started digging our garden (a good faith move on my part, seeing as how we may end up needing to move away for work and I don't want to and maybe if I'm invested in the veggie garden that will somehow mean a school here will magically hire me). We walked to the library. In an hour or so we're going to visit my parents for a couple of days. In short, aaaahhhhhhh. Sure, I'm bringing the laptop along, so I can do some revisions on papers for my faculty adviser and streamline the social studies unit I'll teach in the spring. But I'll be doing it sitting in the sun by the creek on my parents' farm while the girls run around with the dogs!

Spring term will be a most welcome change, as predicted by faculty back in the summer when we first started this adventure. Student teaching for the whole school day (only a little more than I was already there, since the schedule ended up being about 2/3 of the day during the winter) and one class. One! And as much as I don't want to move away from my little town, my little hometown, my kids' only home, I am going to Portland in two weeks for a job fair (wow, we art majors never got anything like that!). I'll get to see old friends, and I'll get to give the whole applications to other towns' schools thing a shot. If we have to relocate, we're prepared for that (although packing up this house will be nuts). But I'm hoping that veggie garden does the trick.

The Big Words, They Keep On Coming

My friends ask me if I have to study this weekend, and although I say "(sigh)yes", the truth is it's all writing now, not really studying per se. I've been thinking about so many different issues related to both education in general and the specific issues of my local area in particular that my head is spinning. Now I'm just trying to write it all up for the completion of the current term.

On my mind, put down here in the hopes I can clear my head enough to finish this week's workload, in no particular order:

Poverty and its impact on kids' educations: poor kids have always had the deck stacked against them, and nowadays more and more of our children are living below the poverty line. In my county, 25% of children under the age of 18 lived below the poverty line in 2007. Since the current recession pretty much started that year and things have only gotten worse, I'd say we're approaching some pretty catastrophic levels of poverty in our schools. The vast majority of public schools in our two local districts qualify for Title I funds. The difficulties faced by these children when they arrive at school are significant. I'm still working on wrapping my head around effective interventions; I've only just begun to identify the symptoms most commonly seen in poor populations. Not that I'm unfamiliar with poverty; understanding it through common sense and being able to objectively identify symptoms and their causes are different skills of observation.

And speaking of the economy, the other main thing on my mind is the job market, specifically for teachers. With state budget shortfalls, most if not all districts in Oregon are cutting school days this year to save money, which is disruptive and stressful to teachers, even though there aren't really any alternatives that I know of. In my town, two elementary schools are closing in June. With less money in the system, I imagine that larger class sizes at the remaining schools will be seen as a sensible response. This means fewer teachers needed, which means a brand new, fresh out of school teacher has a fairly low chance around here of finding any kind of first year position, let alone anything that might be preferred or best suited to the teacher's skills and talents. I really don't want to move away. We're raising a family here, we've put down roots, we're finally starting to work on fixing up our own property (after renovating the rentals over the years to a pretty spiffy state). How can I think about painting my kitchen when I know I have to go to Portland for the big educators' job fair next month and be prepared to jump at any job offers that may come along? I would so much rather stay here and be a part of my own community's future. Maybe substitute teaching won't be too bad. Maybe I can even make it great!

the taxonomy of my winter "vacation"

It's all or nothing around here. I'm either wrestling with defining and reproducing the necessary elements of the portfolio and the instructional unit I'm preparing for next term, or I'm whizzing away with the designing (backwardly, of course), developing, and creating of what I'm sure will be mind-blowingly fabulous pieces of pedagogy. For real.

procrastination

To procrastinate, also to dally, defer, delay, loiter, postpone, prolong, stall, wait...
Note to self: current events may be important, and certain voices may even be articlulate and informed, but investigating last night's presidential debate is not the same as researching county housing and unemployment statistics for my Instructional Setting Analysis, due a mere four days from now.
Note to self the second: publicly chastising self via blog for procrastinating is still procrastinating. We all know it's true. Back to work now, before the kids wake up!

taking time to breathe before the fall quarter starts

It's a rare quiet weeknight tonight, one of the last for a while with a fairly light workload hanging over my head. Classes start in five days, and though there's a paper due on the first day of one of the four classes we're taking, there's not much else to do this week but turn up for the fall practicum hours in the classroom. I've been squeezing in some volunteer time at my daughters' school, getting caught up on the family's eBay business, and trying to give my two-year-old as much extra attention as possible after a month of being away forty hours a week!
I'm enjoying the peace immensely: my husband crashed out really early tonight after a long day of running all sorts of errands, taking my car to the mechanic, and putting the finishing touches on a rental house before the new tenants move in this weekend. I'm letting my ten-year-old be distracted from practicing her flute because the distraction at the moment is working with the seven-year-old to scrub clean the stairwell! Weird but true. And the two-year-old who spent all afternoon fussing and insisting on constant attention is making abstract art with her crayons, and actually on paper this time!
This week has been eventful in the sixth grade class where I've been assigned for the fall practicum (and where I'll begin student teaching in a few months). One boy in particular has been acting out like crazy: milking a minor injury (perhaps even faking a bit... I'm just saying...) whenever he thinks it might get him out of work, throwing fits and crying when he gets called on it or reminded to just do his assignments, and even pestering and kicking one or two classmates. I'm hoping to be able to give him a little attention when he's not being naughty; I told him the other day that I'd caught him being smart (I really had: he had some insightful and even almost philosophical answers to what could have been a super simplistic assignment) and that now I'd know what to expect from him!
Time for bed; got to manage the kiddos and be fresh in the morning!

The project begins...

I'm off and running on this great madcap adventure called Becoming A Teacher! Graduate studies at Southern Oregon University began two weeks ago, and though a lot is being squeezed into this short summer session (as much work as a regular length term in only four weeks), it's doable as long as I don't spend too much time on other stuff. Like my kids, the family's online business, the renovation of a rental house we're working on, bathing, you know. While I'm a bit sleep deprived right now, I think it's under control.
So far, I have to say that I'm pleased with the direction my courses are taking. The curriculum design we're working on is pleasantly difficult. That sounds weird, but what I mean is that while it takes a lot of effort and a different way of looking at the material, it's fascinating to me to get into the methodologies behind unit planning. Even when dealing with the youngest children, it's complex.

And, I'm also happy to report that so far my suspicion seems to be correct: that the five years of elementary classroom volunteering I've put in have given me a pretty good idea of what I'm getting myself into, and so far I still feel prepared! Let's see how I rate that after the "September Experience": a month long practicum in an elementary classroom. Looking forward to it!