Institute- Week One

Greetings from Rice University! I've officially completed my first week at institute, and it was nuts. First of all, this is the earliest I've had to get up regularly since high school- my bus leaves at 6:50. This week was mostly just training- and a LOT of it. We get back from the school between 5 and 5:30-5:40. This week, we had a lot of 8pm sessions, so I only had time to run once this week :-( but it was not entirely pleasant anyway- even around 6 the temperature is around 90 and the humidity is nuts! At night, I spend crazy amounts of time lesson planning, but now that I've had some practice I think it will be a lot easier.

I had my first real teaching experience on Thursday, and I think it went really well. I'm teaching 6th grade English/Language Arts for summer school, which is a HUGE relief because a lot of social studies/english teachers were given summer math assignments. (That would have been the blind leading the blind- oy!) My middle school decided to focus on just English and Math for the summer, so the students have 2 ELA and 2 math periods a day. My "partner" teacher (the guy who teaches my kids' other English period) is really chill- I definitely lucked out! My SMT (summer mentor teacher) also seems really nice and my CMA (corps member advisor) is absolutely awesome and soooo patient while putting up with my type-A/OCD/perfectionist tendencies! (haha)

Yesterday I found out that I have officially been placed at a school- YAY! (The anticipation was killing me.) I'll be teaching social studies at the middle school level, but I don't know what grade yet. I'm really excited- I really wanted to teach social studies, and after this week I know that middle school is definitely the right age group for me. I can't wait to share more details once I get them! Since I have a placement, this means that I can also start apartment hunting and car shopping, which is also a huge relief!

That brings us to this morning- I had to wake early on a Saturday so I could take a practice TExES exam. (It's like the Praxis, but Texas has it's own teacher exam for some reason.) I can't wait until tomorrow morning so I can actually get up AFTER the sun rises. Anyway, I have some lesson plans to write and then I might actually get to the gym today! Happy weekend!