this is all so hectic and exhausting. I could be on the verge of exhuberance or total disaster - either way, I'm too tired to see it coming.

On the weekends, I put in 10 hour days on the computer. During the week, I leave home by 7:15, get to school by 7:45 and do all my printing, photocopying, setting up papers and etc. until school starts at 8:30. At 8:30, I start teaching but kids trickle in until after 9:00 and each one wants you to stop and tell them what's going on, while you're in the middle of performing or directing 20 some of their peers.

At 9:45, the kids get a 15 min. break, but they think it's the perfect time to ask you to dig up everything they missed by skipping last class or just peester you about whatever. if your lucky, you might have time to pee or replenish your supply of photocopies, assumign the machines are wroking. Then, another class.

I'm lucky, so this period is a repeat, meaning new set of kids, but roughly the same lesson. Performance time again, with a zillion other distractions - phone ringing, people at the door, kids late, choas, and "Ms. Whi-leee" every ten seconds. At 11:15, silent reading for 20 mins. and you have to model good reading behaviour, taking out a book and reading the same sentence over and over because you get interrupted by kids and are really too busy thinking about your next lesson anyways.

Bell goes. 5 minutes to run across the hall and grab all of the book. papers and etc. for the next class - a different subject. By the time you get to the next classroom, kids are already pilin gin, waving early dismissal notes and "are we gonna have homework" and you have to get them all settled. Review questions on the overhead so you get 5 minutes to get your crap together.

12:55, lunch. Kids needing to be causght up, liasing with the librarian about upcoming projects. With luck, you make it to the caf in time to scarf back a sandwich. Head spinning. Last period - my prep block. Scramble to reduce the sheer pound of marking to be transported home. Track down counsellors to find out about kids who don't show up or etc. Calls home. Meetings with sponsors who have pages of critiques on your lesson. Try to get organized for the next day.

School ends. Meetings, kids, etc. until about 4, then head home. 4:45 Collapse. Only about another 3 or so hours of work to do to get ready for the next day - more if there's extra marking or a new unit beginning. Pause to eat. My diet lately has been so disgusting. Work. Type. Produce. 9:30 quit. Relax for an hour or so. Try to shut the brain down so you can sleep. Bedtime around 11 because tomorrow, you have to wake up by 6 and do it all again.

To top it off, yesterday I went on the grade 11 field trip to the legislature in Victoria to help supervise. Up at 4:15 to be at school for 5:30 (yes, that's am). Crazy busy day, home again around 9pm. I dont' know which way is up, but I do know I need more lessons for tomorrow, or this juggling act won't end well.

For those who'd asked about what it's like, voila. All I have to do this weekend is design an entitre unit, create a test, create a project, mark about 200 various assignments, and plan as many of next week's lessons as I possibly can. May 5th folks, the day this all ends and I sleep for a week.

*twitch* back to work.

Not a whole lot to report. If you weren't being spared the pleasure of my company due to my extreme busy-ness, all you'd hear would be endless reflections and musings on lessons I teach and the students I work with each day. Nothing particularly blogable, and I spend too much time typing as it is. Have to admit though, I'm in count down mode: May 5th, here I come. Not that I don't like teaching - I adore what I get to do, and know I'll miss my cute little flock of grade 8s accutely, but I do miss having a life where I feature as at least a supporting character. Lately, I've become backdrop.

I think that's what's been going on, although there's still been too much erand running and waking up early for me to be quite sure, and it's already getting on in the week to the point where I know I have to get back to work soon. *okay, slow down*
so this morning, I'm sitting on the couch in my pyjamas drwoning out the construction across the alley with Bob Dylan. And sipping coffee.
Tomorrow the schoolwork begins.
*slowdown*
yesterday, I went shopping and ate sushi with Katia.
Cam bought a bottle of bombay saphire the other night, and there has also been haagen das in the house. Nat is moving out. Him and his mom have a place in white rock, near his dad's boat. I'm participating in a study on how optimists and people who believe that good things are possible think. They're interviewing me on Friday.
Back at it in a few days.
*head down*
no! *head on a pillow*
It's just okay. It's just that these days seem to melt away, and I'm still feeling afternoon nap deprivation.
*I didn't WANT to make sense*

Well, here it is, Wednesday night and I've just about reached the halfway point on this nutso train to teachertown. I know that both of the sponsor teachers I'm working with think that I am doing well, which is nice, and means barring some horrible and unimaginable circumstance, I will pass and get my teaching certification. $10,000 well spent? That remains to be seen.

I adore my class of grade 8s, but they are so cute and impressionable at that age, and I know sometimes I seem awfully old and "teachery" to them, but we have a good raport I think, and they have done some really awsome work for me. Out of the 25 kids in that class, I have fully 7 with learning "exeptionalities" or who have been identified as at-risk. It makes for quite the range of personalities and characteristics, but seeing those kids be succesful and feel renewed confidence in their abilities has been the most rewarding part of this whole thing for me. I had never imagined how much of my time and attention would need to be devoted to students like this, but for some of these kids, you begin to see that at school may be the only place that they have actual positive and supportive relationships with adults, so anything that I can contribute to that feels very worthwhile.

One of my sponsors came up to me the other day while I was watching my social studies 10 class work away and said "I can just tell that you're going to be great at this." Since it was pretty much the first feedback I've gotten from har that gave any real indication of what she thought of me, I was pretty damned happy. The ss10 has been a bit of a challenge - I've got one block that is really sweet, small, and quite easy to work with, very receptive, etc. and another that is much more of a mixed bag - much bigger, and with some really high end kids, but also soem really low end, with the most severe special needs I've encountered so far. The biggest part, I think, of what makes the class tough is how transient the kids are. There are only a dozen or so out of a class of almost 30 who actually attend regularly, so there are constantly kids showing up with no idea what is going on, and who shows up can have a huge influence on the whole class dynamic. Almost 2/3 of that class failed last term, and I'm not quite sure how to handle the whole thing. I know it has to be up to the students, but it is pretty unnerving even thinking about the fact that there are still about a half dozen of them that I have ever even met, and I've been teaching them for two weeks. A great many of them I've only met once.

Today, my main sponsor teacher bought lunch for all us student teachers and we had a nice chat. The best part of all of this has been getting to work with my peers - the other student teachers - and bounce around strategies and ideas. There are three of us all teaching humanities 8, and the collaboration between us has been awsome.

Oh the stories I have to tell! But they wil have to wait, since I still have to battle through my exhaustion and hammer out the details of my ss10 lesson for tomorrow morning. My faculty advisor from UBC is coming in to observe my class before my formal midpoint meeting with him and both my sponsors, and I'm all nervous even though he's coming to see my nice class and I'm sure it will all go fine. I still feel like I'm battling against getting sick too... No rest for the wicked though, and back to planning I go.

1. dying your hair because a pretty looking colour is on sale
2. spontaneous CPU meltdowns on Sunday morning that wreck everything
3. personality conflicts between people who have fundamentally the same desires/motivations

PLUS, I got a really sweet present and card today from the girl who I coached in the speech contest who will be going to New York this summer.

mood: rollercoaster
music: high school hallways
want: a vacation

I can finally see spring break peaking around the corner, and it sure looks good. Survived another week brutally short on sleep and running my butt off, and it even had some high points such as a student I coached placing second in a city-wide speech competition (the same one I placed 2nd in when I was in grade 11, to bring things full circle).

I'm still jumpy, emotional, and over-worked, but ever trudging onwards, and I do have a handful of really positive experiences from my practicum so far to draw on for future inspiration. Some of the details, personalities, and politics are still making my head swim. Everyone, I think, ends up developing their own teaching style, and as much as the job of the student teacher is really to try to become their sponsor teacher as best they can, I still feel so strongly that my best classes have happened when I was able to just be myself. There must be a happy medium somewhere.