Week Three...

Institute, Week Three

Okay so now, just about all the shiny-newness of Institute is wearing thin. We are tired. No, scratch that… we’re freakin’ worn out. And we’re only halfway through Institute. I can’t remember the last time I went to bed at a decent time or woke up actually feeling rested and not tired. I get up at five and I’m out of the house by six, on the highway and at my practice teaching site by 7, usually. If I get out early enough, there’s not really any traffic and I can take my time getting there.

My practice teaching site is NOWHERE near my house – in fact, it’s all the way across town, and this trekking from my house to the practice teaching site to the main site and back home again is seriously killing my gas tank. Gas is c-r-a-z-y high right now, and my husband is easily putting $100 a week into the car for gas just so I can get everywhere I need to be for Institute. If I were working, that might not be such a struggle… but Institute is not paid time. We are essentially working for FREE for the entire course of Institute, and IF we finish, IF we pass and IF we graduate, we’ll get a stipend for the program for all our trouble. Don’t get me wrong, I knew this going in and I’m thankful for the stipend (when we get it), but doing all this spending week after week after week with no money coming in to replace it is seriously painful, and at times, scary. The gas needle has been on E more times that I wish to remember, and I find myself praying that I won’t run out of gas on the highway on the way to practice teaching in the mornings or on the way to the main site in the afternoons… And whatever you do, don’t be late. Lateness past 15 minutes = an absence = a writeup… 2 or 3 ‘absences’ = you getting kicked out of the program… for good. Talk about stressful…

The threat looms everywhere... late assignment? forgot an email? late to class?...

Institute's starting to feel like a bully...

This week, we’re student teaching a few times during the week. We were supposed to write 3-4 hour-long lessons to work with small groups of students, to kind of ease our way into teaching and being in front of the kids. My fellow PTs and I got our stuff all written up and ready, submitted by last Thursday for this week, only to not be able to use it. We had so, so much information to cover during the two-week summer school session that we never had time to pull the kids away into small groups for any specified amount of time, because there was just so much to teach them in regular class session. It all worked together, though. Being able to watch our CT in action was more than worth it.

So, week three passes and we haven’t been in front of our students to teach an actual lesson just yet. Truth be told, though, very few PTs in the school we’re assigned to were able to teach this week, because we all pretty much ran into the same thing. There’s just so much to teach in such a short time that taking an hour or two (or three) away per week from that already tight schedule just isn’t feasible. These kids have to pass an EOC in just over a week, and we have to get as much content in as we can, so nobody minds. We all fully understand. And perhaps underneath all that, we’re all secretly glad that things have worked out the way they have because we were just a little terrified at the thought of having to stand in front of a classroom full of kids we barely know and try to actually ‘teach’ them something. Laughable, huh? Yeah, I know. Especially considering the fact that we’re trying to become, ummm… TEACHERS???   LOL  Hey… gotta get rid of those jitters sometime, right??