Monday, March 1, 2010

A Day in the Life of a Student-Teacher

The last semester of a college student's life feels a bit like limbo, especially for a Student-Teacher. The world expects you to take on a lot of the responsibilities of a real-live grown-up, but in so many ways, you're really still a college kid. It's really weird, and pretty frustrating sometimes. The good news is that I love being a student-teacher. For the first time in a long time, I am 100% certain that God created me to teach and that I am right where I belong. It is such a blessed and peaceful feeling. It makes all the hard stuff a lot easier to deal with.

For those of you who may not really be able to understand just what I mean about the ambiguity of a student-teacher's life, here's what a typical day looks like. I'm afraid that it looks more and more like the real world every day.

6:00 am Awakened by vibrating cell phone alarm. Removes ear plugs, crawls out of bed, and staggers into the bathroom to be further awakened by warm morning shower.

6:15 am Checks email and Facebook. Packs breakfast, lunch, and daily snack.

7:10 am Leaves dorm room dressed "professionally."

7:30 am Arrives at High School 15 minutes before cooperating teacher, adjusts the thermostat in classroom, and gets herself ready for the day.

8:00am The day officially begins 2hours after she woke up, but 1 hour before it used to begin.

9:40am Teaches 9th graders Language Arts concepts they should have mastered at least 3 years ago.

10:30am Conferences with cooperating teacher during planning period, has quick snack and bathroom break before next class begins.

12:03 pm Blessed lunchtime

1:35 pm Daily hall duty: aka "Make sure the crazy kids don't kill each other."

3:15 pm School day ends

3:25 pm Leaves school

3:50 pm Arrives back on campus, picks up Rob-Bob to go shopping for Monica's lingerie shower this weekend.

4:45pm Arrives back on campus, goes to dorm room to check email, eat dinner, and begin work on lesson plans for this week's official evaluation.

5:50pm Goes to the Reynolds for Spring Sing Vocal Track practice.

7:30pm Goes to gym to work out.

8:20pm Arrives back in dorm room to take a quick shower and work on lesson plans.

8:55pm Goes back to the Reynolds for Regina club meeting.

9:35 pm Back in dorm room to finish lesson plans, read Bible, decide on tomorrow's wardrobe choice, blog, and chat with friends online a bit.

10:30pm Gather things for tomorrow and begin nightly routine.

11:00 pm Lights out

6:00 am Do it all over again.

Occasionally other teachers at my school will ask me if this is still really what I want to do, what I want my life to be like. Some days it feels like way too much to handle. But, most days it's practically perfect.

1 comment:

  1. The good news is that your actual life hopefully won't involve quite as long a commute, a lot more money, and three months off in the summer to do what you want. Teaching ain't that bad of a gig.

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