New Blog Link

I would like to announce the addition of another blog link, "Jack's Arts and Crafts". This is the showcase of artwork by my friend Karen's (of flidstickdig fame) son, Jack. Quite a budding artist, I must say! So check out the link to the right, and I'll let you know when the pieces will be for sale. Although, the shipping charges may be pricey (they live in France).

The Fat Lady Sang

The Kids and Me on the Last Day

It's over, folks. I can't believe it. 3 months of student teaching, over. 3 months of excitement, nervousness, hilarity, tears, smiles, frustration, and wonderful kids, over. It went by really fast, I have to admit. Now I keep thinking about my experience and wonder if I got enough training. It's the paranoid side of endings for me. Was that enough? Am I prepared? My logical side tells me I am.

Friday was a great day, but it was filled with so much emotion. I prepared all of my thank you cards and gifts on Thursday night, and woke up early on Friday morning to do some last minute things. The other student teachers and I brought treats for the faculty and staff, so I had a lot to carry into school in addition to the cards and gifts. I had the feeling that I've had many times on the last day of school before a holiday - excitement and anticipation. I knew that the day ahead was going to be filled with all kinds of fun things. I was ready.

For most of the day I was out of the classroom, preparing the things I made for the class, or observing other teachers. Linda mentioned that she was already tired and ready for a break. Hmm, I thought, I'm done. And I get a break after today. Hooray for me!

In the afternoon, Matt's class came over to our room to join our class. All the kids (36) sat in a circle. Each one of them said something that they appreciated about me. Some of the things they said surprised me, like saying that they appreciated how I helped them in math when they didn't understand it. Math is one subject I don't really enjoy teaching, so to hear this gave a boost to my confidence. As I listened to all the kids, I wondered what was wrong with me. I wasn't crying like Linda said I would.

Then Matt spoke.

He went on to say that this was a really big day for me. He tried to put it into perspective from their point of view, saying that I've had this goal for a long time and it took many years of going to school to accomplish it. He said, "This is a really big deal for Mrs. Steinhauer." It hit me at that point. I was done. I finally got to the point that at one time seemed so far off. The floodgates opened.

Then Linda spoke. She said that she learns from her student teachers and what she learned from me was calmness. She said no matter how crazy the kids would get, I would remain calm. She said that she needs to learn how to be more calm too. She also said that we had a great time during our planning periods. We would talk with each other and laugh. I agreed. Those were some of the best times I had with her. It was during those talks that I learned even more about teaching. I also learned more about Linda.

Then Matt asked if I had anything to say. I did have something to say, I had a whole speech planned out in my head. The speech went out the window. I forgot everything I wanted to say. Instead, through tears and a cracking voice, I told the kids that this was a big deal, but they could also get to this point if they believe in themselves. I told them that I know that they can get here someday.

Matt pulled a book from behind his back. There, on the front of this homemade, bound book, was 2 pictures, one of each class. And inside, all different colored pages with pictures and notes from all 36 of the kids. I was so surprised. What a gift. Linda typed up all the appreciations that the kids had submitted about me. We normally do appreciations on Fridays before the kids leave for the weekend. It gives them a good feeling regardless of how their week went. It had the same effect on me as I read over them later. One, in particular, cracked me up and also kind of summed up my experience:

"I appreciate Mrs. Steinhauer because she was helpful the last 15 weeks! It just was really kind and sweet of her to even like this class because sometimes we can be bad or a little crazy!"

Then the combined "party" was over. Matt's class came up to me and hugged me. It became a group hug and started to get a little scary as we started falling over! We quickly recovered and I said goodbye to Matt's class.

Then it was time to give out my "gifts" to the kids. I had printed out a motivational poem about seeing themselves as I see them, and believing in themselves as I believe in them. I mounted this on green paper and then wrote an individual note to each student on the back. I read the poem out loud (again through tears and a cracking voice) and then gave them out one by one. I wasn't expecting what was going to come next.

Some of the kids were sobbing.

I knew some of the kids were going to cry, even sob. But some of the kids I didn't expect at all. The class clown? I didn't think he liked me. The boy whose name I said in my sleep because I repeated it all day, everyday? I didn't think he cared at all. It was surprising, and it made me cry harder too. I kept reminding them that I was going to be back, I was even going to sub for Linda in 2 weeks. It didn't matter. They knew as well as I did that we weren't going to be together everyday. I tried to break up the mood by giving them the class presents from me. I wrapped up the game Sorry, a Mad Libs card game, and a book that the class liked. They seemed touched, but this didn't help to ease the sadness. It just continued.

Linda finally had the answer. She told the kids to clean out their desks. So they did. We put on one of their favorite CDs, and it seemed to keep our minds off of things. Even at the end of the day when I gave them hugs before they left the building, it didn't seem so bad. I know I'll see them again, and they do too.

What a day. The end of an era. The beginning of a new one. A bit intimidating, a bit exciting. I don't know for sure what I will be doing weeks or months from now, but I know it will involve teaching. Probably substitute teaching, but teaching nonetheless.

I'm done. And I'm ready.

Maybe I Didn't Need That Cup of Tea

We used to laugh at my two great aunts who always kept the table pads and a tablecloth on their dining room table. We wondered what the table actually looked like underneath. We speculated that it was a pristine wood beneath all of its protection. It was, and it still is.

I am sitting at it as I type. And I keep the pads and tablecloth on it religiously. I know, I go back and forth - do I expose the table to the elements and risk it getting scratched and stained? Or do I keep the layers on it to keep it safe?

I took the day off today to get some last minute things done on my portfolio and get some things done around the house. Linda was going to be out today, and since I would have to leave by 3:00 to get to my meeting, we would need a sub in the room. I thought, well, if I'm not going to be the sub (I can get paid for subbing now) I won't go in. So I didn't.

I "slept in" a little later than usual, and then fixed one of my favorite breakfasts: a toasted pumpkin bagel with butter and a cup of chai tea with milk. As I set the cup of tea down on the table, I had a feeling that I shouldn't set it down. I don't know why, I usually have water or tea near me while I'm on the computer.

I should've listened to myself.

Maybe it was the butter from the bagel on my fingers. When I reached for my full cup of chai tea, my hand fumbled and suddenly chai tea was everywhere. I danced around the table, lifting up papers and notes and everything else needed for my portfolio before the puddle of tea soaked further along on the tablecloth. Luckily the cup tipped away from the computer.

I'm no longer laughing at the great aunts. I'm thankful for their wisdom and forward thinking.

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

This weekend we went to cut down our Christmas tree. We do this every year with the same group of people. It's become one of our Christmas traditions, and it's really a lot of fun.


No offense to our Christmas tree growing up, but it was an artificial one. At that time, not a lot of people bought real Christmas trees, at least not in my neighborhood. The McGraths across the street had a white one that they kept in their foyer. But that wasn't the best part. They also had a light that changed from red to blue to green that they would shine on the Christmas tree. No joke. We would watch that thing for hours. Cheap entertainment.


In our house every year, my parents would wrangle a huge box up the basement steps and plop it into the living room. When we would open the dusty box, we were immediately met with a musty smell. The Christmas tree waited inside, all in pieces. Each branch was held together by a thick wire. And on the end of the wire was a painted color that corresponded to the hole on the tree pole ("trunk"). Once the tree was in the stand, you could try to match the branches to the trunk. Sounds easy, huh? Yeah, not so much when half the paint was chipping off or you couldn't tell if the color was green or blue, or rust.


Next came the lights. As if untangling the mound of lights wasn't enough, plugging in the strands to see if they worked was another job. And if they didn't work? Well, you wouldn't throw them out. Oh no, there was some engineering to be done. In other words, go through each strand, bulb by bulb, and see if you could find the culprit. Right.


And then came the dusty, fuzzy garland. I think it was gold. Or silver. Regardless, this same garland came in handy when my brother's needed some "garnish" for their shepherd's costumes for the church Christmas pageant. The silver or gold looked exquisite tacked onto my dad's light blue terry cloth bathrobe.





And finally the ornaments. I loved (and still do) the ornament part. Every year you get to reminisce about special ornaments given to you by special people. My mom did a great thing every year. She bought all of us ornaments surrounding a theme. So now on our Christmas tree, we have a lot of ornaments, some as old as me! In fact, one of my favorite ornaments is the spoon from my "Hey Diddle Diddle" mobile that my mom fashioned into an ornament. Very cool.
It wasn't until I was in college that we got rid of the artificial tree and got a real one. Go figure - the church started selling them as a fundraiser and suddenly we were real-tree converts. At one point, we even had 2 in our house (we really wanted to give to the church). It was at that time that I decided real is the way to go. You really can't get that pine smell from a candle. Or from Pine-Sol. Believe me, I've tried.





After college, my roommates and I would go to the local lot selling trees. I never really considered where they came from, I guess somewhere in the "country". "You can take a girl out of the city..."



Okay, I digress. Back to Saturday. We went to a tree farm not far from our house. The day was grey and cold (about 25 degrees - brrr). I bundled up in long johns, boots, hat, mittens, and my heavy ski coat. I didn't know how long it would take to find "our" tree, and I didn't want to be cold. Luckily, I really didn't need all of the layers because we only took about a half hour to find our tree. Here is a shot of the tree before we got it:

(That's Stein on the right cutting it down. My job was to wait for the signal to pull the tree while he sawed. I had time for a picture.)

And here it is once we (Stein) cut it down.

And check these out. No, I didn't touch up the pictures in blue. These are blue Christmas trees. If the McGraths could only see these now. They wouldn't need their fancy rotating lights. Seriously, how do you decorate without clashing colors?

After loading the tree into the car, we headed over to our friends Doug and Susan's house for a get-together. There ended up being a lot of people there, about 25 + kids, so their house was pretty full. When we first started this tradition, there would only be a group of us, so it really has become an event. Our holiday eating continued. Everyone brought an appetizer or dessert, and Susan made chili, so there was food galore. One of my favorite recipes there was this one which may become an appetizer I bring to all holiday parties:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_30611,00.html

We left their house just in time to drive through snow and freezing rain. Lovely. We made it home safe and I immediately crawled into bed.

Sunday, we had our niece and nephew over to decorate the tree. This has also become a tradition for us. Eric has been doing it for about 4 years now, and this was the 2nd year for Mia. We still separate the really fragile ornaments from the less-fragile ones just to be safe. This year, they thought that the back of the couch would be a great ladder to use. I didn't want to see either one of them dive into the tree, so I kept a close eye on them. Here are some pics from Sunday:

Eric putting some ornaments on. (That was the other thing - Stein and I had to do a little rearranging after they left to eliminate the cluster factor).

Stein giving Mia a boost to hang an ornament. "I want to hang this one really high!" she said. (She said that with all of them.)

Keeping steady with my hand on the ceiling while I put the finishing touch on the tree top. Beth the angel. (My mom named her. She was actually made by my Aunt Connie, but she lives in a box from Beth's Hallmark.)


And the tree, all aglow. If only you could smell it. It smells like Christmas. And it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here.

Endings

Most endings are bittersweet for me. Usually they're sad because of the closing, the finality. But they're also exciting because of the promise of new beginnings, a fresh start. That is exactly how I'm feeling this week. Bittersweet.

It's hard to believe that this will be my last week of student teaching. Not to sound cliche, but I feel like it was just last week that Linda and I were getting the room ready to start the year. Now it's time to leave. This past week flew by as I was weaning myself from teaching all the lessons to just teaching two. I resumed my role as observer once again, watching Linda as she took over in the classroom. She's the pro, and she took over flawlessly.

In the next week I will be giving back all of the teaching as I wrap up the units in writing and science. I will be getting my portfolio together in a more polished state. I will also be getting my thank you notes written.

Linda told me what they typically do for student teachers who are leaving. Friday afternoon, the kids (from both 4th grade classrooms) will gather in one room, in a circle. I will be the guest of honor. Each child will say something that he/she appreciates about me. "I have never had a student teacher who didn't cry at this point," Linda said. I started getting choked up as she was explaining it.

I'm going to be a mess on Friday.

I am feeling bittersweet about this ending. I'm sad that I won't see all of these kids on a regular basis, sad that I won't get to see the strides that they will make by the end of the school year. But I'm excited to start the next phase of my learning, to actually get out there and put what I've learned into action. I'm definitely ready. Am I going to trip and fall and skin my knees as I start teaching? Of course. Will I have hard days when I wish that I was instead working at Hallmark (a family joke)? You bet. But I know that "the hook" is there. The hook is what my friend Regina calls the breakthroughs with a child, or a good lesson taught, or a kind gesture from one of your students. I have been "hooked" and it's what gets you through the other more difficult days.

After this week, I will no longer be a student teacher, I will be a teacher. Wow.

Okay, This is Getting Ridiculous

I wrote in a previous post about the amount of catalogs that we've been receiving this holiday season. Actually, it started before the holiday season, sometime around Halloween. It hasn't stopped. Everyday, we get at least 3 catalogs, from all different places.

I mentioned to Stein how wasteful it is for all this paper to be used. We're lucky here in Ann Arbor to have curbside recycling. Every week, the city collects our paper, cans, bottles, and plastic containers. I keep thinking about people who don't recycle or don't have it conveniently picked up every week. What happens to all those catalogs? More importantly, what happened to all those trees? I just recently saw a piece on the news about calling to have all these catalogs cancelled. Like I have the time to sit and call every place. Just add it to my list of things to do...

To give you an idea of some of the catalogs we've received, here is a list of the ones we still have around from the past week or so:

The Popcorn Factory (x3)
Sahalie (an REI-type store)
LL Bean
Pajama Gram (all pajamas)
Brookstone
Pier 1
REI
Pottery Barn (x2)
Hamacher Schlemmer
Mrs. Prindable's Apples ($20 caramel apples!)
Signals
Harry and David
Cheryl & Co.
The Fruit Company
Hershey's
Zingerman's
Land's End (x2)
Eddie Bauer
Sharper Image
Crate and Barrel (x2)
Uncommon Goods

Stop the madness!

A Blanket of White

I obviously still need to work on focusing with my new camera, but I just got a handle on how to download and then upload images. It wasn't too bad, especially since I used to have a similar camera and remembered most of what to do.

This picture was taken by me this morning before I left for school. It was cloudy and the camera wanted to use the flash as I tried to get a shot of my neighbor's tree and bushes. We got some snow last night and periodically during the day today. It was a really wet snow, so it outlined the trees nicely. I can't believe that less than a week ago there were still some colored leaves clinging to the branches. Now all the trees are completely bare.

School today went really well, especially since I only had to teach 2 subjects! I also had my last observation with my advisor and that went pretty well too. I was pleasantly surprised with the kid's attention spans. Hopefully it was a reflection on the content and structure of my lesson!

I did notice today that they acted a lot better with Linda than they did with me. At first I was a little miffed that they were acting differently with her than me, but then I let go of that. She will have them for the rest of the year. I will be back periodically to sub, but for the most part, I am done. It's time to move on. Did they test me? You bet they did. Every step of the way. And you know what? I'm glad. It makes the experience that much more authentic. It also makes the end of it all that much sweeter. My confidence has increased, and I can say that I made it through some pretty tough days. That feels good.

The next big assignment that is due is my portfolio. This will hold all of my accomplishments, philosophies, pictures, etc. from my time in school and student teaching. It's been a good exercise to get everything ready to put in the portfolio. It has helped me to organize my thoughts and reflect about my experience. Now the tricky part will be putting it all together in an organized, creative way. I found myself in the scrap booking aisles at Michael's yesterday. Don't ask. I was looking for inspiration on themes. I found myself overwhelmed with cutesy. No offense to any of you scrap bookers (or whatever the proper name is), but there is a lot of stuff that goes with scrap booking. I had no idea.

Until next post... Happy winter to all, and to all a good night!