Well, I can't belive I'm almost 1/6th done this practicum already, and so far, so good. I've had so many interruptions in my lessons with the humanities 8 class, that in some sense this week was like last week - we had to "settle back in" - but at least I had the added advantages of knowing all of the kids names and having slightly more of a clue what I'm doing. In getting to actually teach lessons three days in a row (without presentations from their counsellor taking up the block, or gr.8 planning, or whatever) I finally established some sense of normalcy in the room. We ended the week with two lessons that ran flawlessly. The kids were pretty much perfectly behaved, they were actively participating, one activity flowed to the next, and they produced soem really great work. As the icing on the cake, my advisor from UBC came down to do his first formal observation of my teaching on Friday, aka perfect class #2, and wrote me a glowing evaluation.

Plus, sunny! Ahhhh. Makes everything better.

I know I'm only going to get busier from here on in, but I'm trying to stay focused on what's gotten me through the first bumps - I actually adore the kids. They're lovely and it's great to see them learning and trying out new ideas. By tomorrow I have to be cracking on a feudalism unit for my grade 8s to start once we finish poetry and on my socials 10 BC history unit, since before the end of the month, two blocks of social studies 10 will be added to my teaching load. Currently, the prospect makes me want to flee to mexico, but I'm beginning to get the sense that maybe this whole teachign thing just becomes like a natural skill eventually, and I might actually find it gets easier as time goes by.

This might be the dullest post ever, but a few people had expressed interest in hearing how the practicum was manhandling me so far, so for them, everyone else suffers too, just like at school.