student-teaching: halfway done.

I am more than halfway done with my student-teaching experience. Where does the time go? Didn't I just get started? Am I really going to be ready to be a teacher on my own? Who knows. All I know is, the experience continues to be a really stressful, really busy, and really, really rewarding one.

In basic news, I am teaching almost every lesson of the day now. Next Tuesday, I'll take over the last lesson period that my teacher will relinquish to me: Writing Workshop. Somehow I feel like I'm doing so much but I'm not sure how I got here. I don't quite feel like head teacher but I don't feel like I'm sitting back and watching either. Starting April 1st, my teacher says she will turn off her voice and try to take as much of a backseat as possible so that I truly experience being head teacher for a whole month. Oy!

Here are some funny moments that I have experienced with my kids since I last blogged about teaching.

*All of the stories below happened in ASL but I'm giving them to you in an English interpretation.

• One girl saw a dollar coin in my fake coins box (for math lessons) and asked me about the woman on it. I started explaining to her who Sacagawea was. When I mentioned Oregon, I asked her if she knew what state that was. She ran over to the map of the United States on the wall and I verbally (well, in sign) directed her to find Oregon. She finally pointed to it and, reading the map, signed, "Oregon. Last name, Salem."

• While the kids were lining up for lunch one day, one of the girls was giving me a funny, wondering look. I asked her what was up and she slyly asked me if I had a boyfriend. When I smiled and asked her why she wanted to know, she signed, "Because you dress fancy."(Disclaimer, I wear cardigans, plain shirts, jeans, and moccasins to work each day.)

• While my teacher was teaching the kids about the five senses in order to later do an observation for a science lesson, she was asking each kid to repeat the following sentences after her: "I see with my eyes," "I smell with my nose," etc. When it was one boy's turn, he was signing "I hear with my ears," when he trailed off, then dramatically exclaimed, "No, I don't hear anything!"

• I was reading and correcting one girl's reading response for a book called ROY G. BIV. I was asking her what color each letter in the name stood for to make sure that she understood the book. I pointed to each letter and she gave me the correct sign for each until I got to I. I waited for a few seconds then said, "This is a hard one. Do you remember it at all?" Suddenly, she had an "aha!" look on her face and gave me the sign for "vodka."

• During guided reading with the three girls, I was asking them about friendship since that was the major theme in the book we were reading. I asked them who their best friends were and why. This was a hard question for them to answer at first but two of them finally started explaining that friends like the same things, make each other laugh, etc. When I turned to the third girl to elicit some sort of response, she interrupted me with a "I know, I know. We're friends because it's fun. Because it's smooth."

• On another day, while reading the same book, there was a part of the story about growing out of your favorite clothes and having to give them away. One girl couldn't read a word on the page (I think it was something like "hand-me-down") so I was asking her to think about what she was reading. I asked her, "Have you ever grown out of clothes before? Did you used to be smaller than you are now? Yes? Ok, what did you do with the clothes once they didn't fit you anymore?" She replied, "I gave them to the dog."

•  Lastly, I started teaching science lessons and let me tell you, these make me sweat. I have less language for science and find it a bit of a struggle to teach the concepts I want to. I just started this week though so hopefully it will feel smoother over the next few weeks. Anyway, because I get so nervous about the science lessons, I am particularly meticulous about planning these lessons despite them only lasting 30-45 minutes. I read the textbook multiple times, practice signing what I'm going say, etc. On the day I was supposed to do an apple lab with the students, I brought in an apple from a market down the street. I started the lesson, asking the kids about seeds, reviewing what I had taught them about seeds the day before, asking them why seeds were important, etc. The kids hate science but I kept saying "Today will be fun! We're doing a science lab!" When it came time to cut the apple in half and discover the seeds inside the apple, I made a big, fat show of it. Imagine the laughter that erupted amongst the students, my teacher, and myself when I cut open the apple and there were no seeds inside. None.