WHOA!

I am about to wrap up my last semester as a regular graduate student and on January 28th I will begin working side by side with my mentor teacher(s) in my student teaching experience.

All I can think is... "Whoa." (said in a Joey Lawrence voice of course)

Reflecting on this prompted me to go back and look at what I wrote about when I first began this graduate school journey back in the fall of 2010. Here is the post from the first week of classes. It seems like so long ago! I cannot believe how much has changed since then and how much I have changed!

For example, in that post I complained about my classes being with undergrads and grads in the same class. Looking back on that complaint now, I feel bad. Yes, it did surprise me, but now that I have spent so much time working with some amazing undergraduate pre-service teachers, I am grateful I was in classes with them! Many of them are so much more mature than I was at ages 19-21.

I also talked a lot about work and the struggles of being in charge of a management team of four adults and then a staff of 20-50 and theeeeennn managing a three million dollar store. Oh, gawd, I SO DO NOT miss that at all! I am very much looking forward to only managing classrooms of children for the rest of my career and I have no desire to be in administration and manage adults AGAIN.

Adults are way worse than children.

I digress.

Last weekend I got my student teaching placements and I will be with a 3rd grade teacher in a suburban district for the first 8 weeks and then I will be with a special education teacher in K/1st grade (omg) in a urban district for the last 8 weeks. I am so excited and I feel extremely fortunate in my student teaching placements! I had originally requested to be with a specific teacher, but that teacher will be out on maternity leave, so that did not work out and I did not have any other suggestions, so I basically told the student teaching coordinator, "I trust you. Place me with someone who is a good fit." I'm pretty sure she did!

I have not met the teacher at my second placement yet, but I met the teacher at my first placement today and I am almost positive we will get along great! First of all, she is from my boyfriend's hometown and they know each other! Small world, right? In addition to that, she's also my age, which I really like. I have seen enough "veteran" teachers to know that I don't get along very well with inflexibility or people that do not adapt to change well.

(Then again, when I'm older, I probably will not adapt to change very well either!)

So, in the past 2 1/2 years I have learned so much and have met so many really wonderful people. With each step towards being fully licensed to teach elementary school, I am even more certain that I made the right decision to switch careers!

If you could switch careers and realistically do something different, what would it be?