Graduation Station

Well it's official.  I have a Master's in Education.  Does that feel like a good life choice?  Yes.  Does going to the commencement ceremony...?  Yes and no.

First, I forgot I went to a Jesuit school.  While I think what the Jesuit order is all about is really groovy, I'm not terribly religious any more.  So the faith based speakers didn't quite inspire me to be the change I want to see in the world.

Oddly enough, I think graduation reminded me of how insulated from the world I've become.  Being a teacher, it's easy to hole yourself away in a classroom and forget that there is something out there.  I spend so much time thinking or worrying about students that, frankly, my social life is coming home and watching Daredevil with my boyfriend.  Which is an awesome show, by the way.  I talk more to teachers and kids than mundanes only a daily basis, so I forget that not everyone's world rotates around what this kid did when and why.  I'm hoping next year, when my classroom is actually inside the main building, I may have a few more connections, but I'm not holding my breath.

Why this came into such stark view was when I saw my friends being closer friends with everyone but me.  I'm an introvert, and I'm ok with that.  However, it does feel icky when you're the 17th wheel in a group you used to be an integral part of.  I guess graduation is a way of reminding you it's time to move on, to the next part or the next thing.  It's closing a book, putting on the shelf and finding something new.  It can be related, or completely different.  For me, this book has been winding down for a while.  I know I'll still be friends with all of these people, and I still am.  They will be characters in my next book, but maybe not quite as prominent as they were in this one.  I think my next book is going to be a sequel, to be honest.

I don't like the phrase next chapter.  That assumes that the narrative is directly related and the story has no resolution.  Graduate school has a resolution.  I graduated.  I took pictures.  Yay.  Now, it's time for the new story, but it's not unrelated, hence sequel.  All of the lessons from my last phase will be applied with vigor to the next, even more than between college and graduate school.

Undergrad to graduate school were incredibly different, in both population, content and focus.  Undergrad was about me learning what I wanted when I wanted and enjoying life.  Graduate school was learning how to serve others and relate my knowledge in a way that others can understand.  Also, it was way more writing.  Not going to lie, I miss problem sets.  Also, I spent the last two years in the company of teachers, who are definitely my people.  I don't fit, but I fit slightly better than in college.
Anyway, this got off topic quickly.  Graduation:  it's about moving forward.  Which is why I'm kind of moving backward and focusing on art again for a while.  It's something I haven't focused on in 3 years, so I suppose I should.  Plus, I need a hobby this summer.  I can't NOT do something.

I'm happy I'm a teacher, and with the choices I've made, which is always a good sign.  This next phase is going to be difficult, amazing, challenging and a bit undirected, a change for me.  I'll figure it out, one way or another.

Huh...ok

Day 17-

Let's jump right into why everything was a bit crazy.  I'm about to start my observation, my first formal one.  I'm already nervous and sweating and just in a general state of disrepair.  I get a call from the Dean of the school, who is more or less in charge of discipline.  He says he needs a student, and I'm trying to catch my DT's attention when he comes in and grabs him.  She looks at me, and I was kind of like "Yeah...was trying to tell you."  Need to find a better and more efficient way to do that.  Anyway, more or less half of the students also were not in class.  We kind of went "Huh.  Odd."  They were doing tardy sweeps, and because our kids are coming from the locker room, and for some reason can't  change clothes very quickly, they had gotten caught in the hall, carted off to write letters to the teachers about why they were late.  Which only made them later. 

I start my scathingly brilliant lesson on triple beam balances, and it's not tanking, but not resonating.  So I flop around for a bit until we strike gold.  I started asking simpler questions, getting the arms into it, getting the kids more into interacting.  It was magical to hear them all chorus together "MORE" and "LESS."  Then we got the rotation established, and somewhere in there the dean returned the boy...and took three more.  Awesome.  We got started and the kids were having a great job measuring my sidekick (photos of him to come later) and we had a blast.  The boys came back, and my DT got them going on their own worksheets.  We moved onto the next activity, and I got to practice some more with the balances.  I was sweating like crazy.  Super cute.

The bell rang for lunch and the little darlings filed on out of the room.  The next part was I had the debrief with my supervisor, and the subject of my interview/case comes in.  The meeting was put on pause, I conducted my interview and then a couple students from the next class came in to wait until class started.  Did you see anywhere in there that I got a bite to eat?  Yeah, that's because I didn't until my supervisor came back to continue the debrief.  Which is when the bell rang for the class.  So I pounded my sandwich and we went and finished talking and I came back to the classroom.

This class has fairly good language skills so they breezed through everything and moved right onto doing their homework. At the end of class, one student started about how school is torture.  So I told him my schedule.  He determined that I'm basically in hell.  I told him everything is easier once you find something you love.  I told him it takes time, but you have to work hard to get there.  Fast forward to the world's longest day.  This was the ultimate hump day.  Awesome.