Last Day of Student Teaching

I finished my last day of student teaching this past Friday.  It was a bittersweet day.  I of course am happy to be COMPLETELY done with my bachelors degree but I am going to miss my class and my cooperating teacher and all the teachers I worked with.  My student teaching experience was a dream come true.  My cooperating teacher is just a perfect teacher.  She is organized, kind, creative, and fun.

  We got along extremely well and I learned so much from her.  With about 3 1/2 weeks left my cooperating teacher found out that she needed to go on part day bed rest because her blood pressure was extremely high (she's pregnant).  The day she found out she e-mailed my university supervisor to let him know she would need to take half days and would just have me be signed up as the sub.  Neither of us thought it would be a big deal but my university supervisor came rushing in that morning to talk to us about it.  Apparently  he didn't think the university would approve that situation. But he agreed to let it go (after drilling me about why I wanted to do it and telling me I was just doing it for the money). Okay subs in my school district make like $25 for a half day, I'm obviously not doing it for the money.  And ya, Sara and I totally planned for her to have high blood pressure so she would have to go on bed rest so I could make money (insert sarcasm). I just explained to him that I had already developed relationships with my students and other staff members and I was in the middle of teaching my unit and other projects with the students. I would have been devastated if I would have had to switch classes and it totally would have set me back having to adapt to another classroom. The school principal said he felt comfortable with the situation as he had observed me teaching and trusted both Sara and I's judgement. Luckily I was able to stay and had such an amazing experience. Our last day of school we had students present their magazine research reports that they had been working on for months to their parents and then there was a school wide family picnic.

Thomas came to the picnic and hung out for an hour or so afterwards as we watched our third grade program.  Sara's dad is a videographer and he filmed our program from a couple weeks ago and made DVD's. 
I had my first interview for a big girl job this week! It was for a local school district and was what they call a "screener" interview.  So they have a random principal interview you and take notes and then they fill out a rubric.  The rubric is sent to HR and the candidates who score the highest get called for a second interview.  The principal who interviewed me was really nice and I felt at ease. 

 This bookmark is my favorite.  It says "My favorite thing about Mrs. Giles is she's fun and when she teaches stuff that is normally boring like states of matter she makes it fun."

I love, love, loved my student teaching experience and will always think back on this time fondly.