The Dreaded Ten Days

Since my penultimate year of college, I've heard about the "dreaded" ten consecutive days of teaching. The people going through internship whined about them constantly. "You'll never be so tired or emotional," they've said. Frankly speaking, I never got what they were complaining about, especially since this is the first real taste of what it is like to get to be a teacher.

I've been nothing but excited to teach all day for ten days.

Now that I'm halfway through it, I understand the stress a little bit better. I have been tired, but I also think that is from fighting off the spring pollen floating around here. I am still able to wake up early and go to school, and I am still able to go to work every night from 5-10PM, Monday through Thursday.

I think that part of the reason why I am surviving is because my placement teacher and the other teachers at my school are so willing to help me and give me advice. After school on Friday, while I was getting all of the 9 weeks grades submitted, one of the other teachers walked in. She shares an adjoining door with our classroom and is also my placement teacher's mentor.

She asked me how everything was going with my ten days, and I expressed the fact that I was working on rubrics for the students' final products for Thursday. As soon as she heard that, she had me come into her classroom and showed me this grading system she'd come up with (it's like the GPA scale and honestly, I don't know why we haven't done it all along). She also shared some of her rubrics and told me how she approached creating them (hint: it involves not "reinventing the wheel").

Sitting at my computer and finalizing the details for what I expect the products to look like, I can't help but be overwhelmed not by stress, but instead gratitude. I'm so grateful that I have a placement teacher who is so open to collaboration and trying new things in the classroom. I'm grateful that the other sixth grade teachers are so willing to share their knowledge and experiences with me, so I can learn from them.

As I realize I only have about a month left in my internship, I am saddened to realize that I will be leaving all of these wonderful people far sooner than I would've liked. But that's a post for another day...