Excellent!

Overall, this has been a most excellent week. 

Sunday, I had the opportunity to go see Wicked's last performance during their run here in Minneapolis with my Mom, Aunt and Grandmother.  My Grandma is a former English teacher, so it was great being able to update her on my experiences as an English teacher in a different type of setting.  The musical was amazing, and I am so grateful that I was able to go see it.  I need to go get the soundtrack now!  That night I only got about 3 hours of sleep due to L being up at his family's cabin and my fear of having another experience similar to the one I had on Friday.

Monday-Friday at school was good.  It's amazing how fast the weeks go by (despite the fact that I thought that Wednesday was Thursday- I was still surprised when Friday got here!).  One of the nice things about working PT at the school is that I get to roll into school at about 9:30am and then start teaching at 10.  That gives me time to get organized in the morning and mingle with some of the other teachers who have 2nd hr. prep time.  I really love the staff of my school, and they've been great at asking me if I need anything and readily give me advice when I ask for it.  The students have been great, and even those who were giving me a hard time for the first week or so in my 6th hr are doing much better and I don't spend as much time asking them to be quiet and keep their comments appropriate.

Friday was even more amazing because I finally got paid!  I signed my contract last week the day it was ready for me, so I was able to get paid this month rather than get 3 paychecks for the next payday in October (I received 2 checks yesterday to make up for the one I missed at the beginning of the month).  It was a huge stress reliever to see more than $100 in my bank account, and that I now have the ability to pay all of my bills and start putting money away into savings!

The last thing that I am going to mention that made this week excellent was the compliment that I received from a seasoned teacher at my school (I've made her my unofficial mentor... though I'm not sure that she knows this!).  She told me that I teach like someone with years of experience, not a first year teacher and that I'm doing a great job with the students so far!  It's amazing how good a small compliment like that can make one feel.  It really made the rest of my day, and I definitely feel more confident in my teaching :-)

Scariest moment of my life

I was 100% convinced that there was an intruder in our bedroom last night.

I don't know how it came about, but after watching netflix in bed (nothing scary-just old episodes of King of the Hill), I rolled over in an attempt to get to sleep early to cure my exhaustion from a week of teaching.  I was half asleep when I heard a sound like someone had tripped or stepped on something in the room (near the foot of my bed), and then I saw what looked like the light of a cellphone screen projected on the wall, as if someone was trying to find their way around the room without turning on a light.  Then, I swear I felt someone sit down at the foot of my side of the bed.  When I slowly moved my feet, it felt like there was a body that my foot was touching.  At that point, I froze completely.  I couldn't move, and I could barely breath.  Since I was rolled facing the wall, the most I could do to try to wake L up was to poke and pinch at his back, but it wasn't working.  In my mind, I thought that maybe he was faking being asleep too, so that whoever in the room would just take our stuff and walk away.

A few minutes later, I was still frozen, and I was convinced that whoever is sitting at the edge of my bed could hear my heart pounding.  I have never been so scared in my life (especially after I realized that I don't have an easily accessible knife on my bedside table anymore).  After about 30 minutes of being completely still with the sound of my pulse in my ears, I realized that I needed to move my feet a little because they were starting to cramp.  I feigned a sleepy stretch, and then realized that there wasn't a mass near my feet anymore.  I took a chance and swept my feet across the bottom of the bed, and what ever I had convinced myself was there minutes ago, definitely wasn't there anymore.

I don't know what made my brain create this elaborate situation, but it was real enough to me that I actually felt the intruder sit down on the bed, and I legitimately thought that something was going to happen to either L or me.  Though, what I have learned from this is that I need to find myself a new knife to keep near my bed, and put my cellphone closer to the edge of the bedside table if an emergency actually does occur!

End of Week 1

Today was my first Friday as a teacher, and I must say that I had almost forgotten how much I love teaching.  I love the fact that I don't have to follow another teacher's lesson, I'm teaching the subject that I am an expert at, and I'm getting the chance to make connections and build that trust with my students!  Not only that, but I finally have coworkers again!  I haven't had coworkers since I quite the Security Monitor Program in May of 2007, so it's nice to have adults to talk with who are doing the same thing I am.

While there have been some more difficult parts to my first week teaching my own classes, I've most definitely walked out of school each day with a pretty goofy looking grin on my face.  Some of the kids in one of my hours are complete little shits, but even over the course of 4 days, they've stopped testing me as much, and seem to be accepting that they are stuck with me as their teacher.  Most of the kids that I have in my classes are wonderful and lots just need a lot of support and modeling to understand and do the assigned tasks.  After my first day "All about Me" speech, I've had kids come up to me to show me pictures of their guinea pigs, and tell me all about their pets.  They laugh at me when I pronounce 50 Cent as FiddyCent (because it's weird to have a teacher call him that), and when I can name the artist they are listening to on their iPod during work time.  They've also opened up to me in more ways than I could have ever imagined; allowing me to learn about their families, pregnancies, past issues, friends drama, and why they're at the alternative school.

Overall, I've met some wonderful people over the course of the last week, and I'm hoping that I can one day call this school my permanent workplace.