Student Teaching

Believe it or not, I have finally finished enough of my school work that I was able to begin my student teaching in January.  I have finished two of my twelve weeks and I am LOVING it!  The school I am teaching at is a charter school in North East Portland.  The commute isn't nearly as bad as I thought because I have to travel through downtown Portland during rush hour both directions.  I had expected about an hour each way and it's only been about 30-40 minutes.  The students are all great.  They are typically kids that would have been beat up or bullied at a large, traditional school and they are all very accepting of their social differences.

My host teacher, Jess, is wonderful!  She is patient and has very good skills in adapting her teaching to the needs of the students.  Her classroom is arranged in a way so that the students are comfortable and feel like they are capable of learning.  I think I'm going to learn a lot from her, too!

After my 12 of student teaching I should be able to finish and submit my paperwork shortly afterwards.  This means that in about 5 more months I will be done with my bachelor's degree and have a teaching license in Advanced Mathematics.  I'm super excited about this and I'm not really sure where we are going to go from there but I'm pretty confident that I will be working on a Master's degree in Physics afterwards.  I have already earned a few credits towards this degree.

Jess and I are also going to be teaching a math and physics integrated class where there will be a lot of projects and experiments which will lead to statistics, graphing, and predictions.  Our goal is to help students who have tested well in other areas of math but not as well in measurements, estimations, and basic calculations.  The material taught in this class will also be used to complete the requirements of the Master's in Physics!

Kevin still has about a year or year and a half left in his schooling.  He has been watching the kids while I've been working while working and doing his homework.  What a great guy!!  ;-)