It’s been a long two weeks since my last post. Maybe not too long to my handful of followers, but it’s been long for me. 

Since my final quarter of grad school began in early January, I have been not only student teaching, but also working on the edTPA. What is the edTPA, you say? In one word, as my hubby put it, it is stress. It’s this process that consists of planning lessons, teaching and video recording said lessons, and reflecting on these lessons in a paper that’s approximately 25 pages. Sounds simple, right? Well, here’s the thing, there are also a million little rules that, in my humble opinion, have little to do with teaching. Margin size must be one inch or it is automatically rejected. Page length must be exact or it is automatically rejected. Font size must be Arial 11 or…. You guessed it, it is automatically rejected. And while trying to get every single edTPA duck in a row, I have been student teaching. There are just not enough hours in the day. Thankfully, we submitted the edTPA this past Thursday. My confidence level is low that I will pass, mostly because I felt so rushed putting this thing together in less than a month. I’m really hoping all my ducks are marching in a perfect military style row to Pearson for review. But knowing me, one of those ducks will be distracted by a butterfly mid-march and break formation, resulting in my failing score. At any rate, the waiting game begins. Results should be in within a month, so tune in to see if I will actually become a teacher or if I need to select a different career path. Again. Here’s a highlight from my wild and crazy edTPA prep last Saturday night:

In other news, student teaching has been going well. I started my full take over last week, which means I am teaching all subjects now. I was pretty anxious about math, and I’m still fairly nervous, but it has been going ok. All three 4th grade classes are participating in a math challenge to complete and master a variety of 4th grade standards. Two students have completed the challenge and the prize was to play the Pie Face Challenge with the principal. The principal lost both times and the kids went crazy with excitement. This week, the district superintendent challenged all the 4th graders to complete and master the 5th grade standards. He said he will play the Pie Face Challenge with the first student to finish the 5th grade standards and will have lunch with those who finish by April. Needless to say, these kids are beyond excited!

My favorite part of last week was our social studies class. We were learning about the states in the southeast region and touched on segregation in the south and the Civil Rights Movement. They learned about some key events and ultimately the three 4th grade classes participated in a peaceful protest. Groups of 2-3 students worked together to make protest signs for their march. I may be a little biased, but I thought our students had some of the best signs:

This upcoming week is my final complete takeover. After this week I will start to surrender classes back to their teacher. By choice I have opted to keep math and science longer to try to get more exposure to both subjects. I can’t believe I am just about at mid-point in my quarter. I feel that I can focus more on student teaching now that the edTPA has been submitted. I just hope to get the results soon so I know if I can relax and celebrate or begin working on resubmitting any or all of the edTPA. At this point, I’m alright with either alternative, I just want the wait to be short. Fingers crossed for the best!