2 WEEKS DOWN, 16 TO GO!

Rockin' my school spirit! GO EAGLES!

My first two weeks student teaching came and went in a flash!  I am glad to report that I am so completely happy with my school location, and Cooperating Teacher (CT) assignment.  It feels so good to finally be in a classroom full time, where I can get to know my students better…and I'm feeling especially lucky to be learning from my CT and her 4 other 2nd grade team mates! Here is a brief recap:

My CT:

She is absolutely amazing.  She has 14 years of experience, and definitely knows how to run her classroom successfully!  She is super laid back, and the good kind of sarcastic ;-)  She seems happy to have me in her class, and after only two weeks I feel like we mesh well together. After my first week she gave my the sweetest card, it's the small things that mean the most!

She let me take over a few of the fluency tests (they're super simple to do, but I'm glad she's trusting me to take over with assessing so soon!).  Overall, I know she will be my biggest influence of my masters program, and I will learn the most from my time spent in the classroom with her!

Our students:

I'm feeling incredibly lucky to join her class this year, the students are AMAZING!  Seriously, they seem so mature and self sufficient compared to other 2nd graders I've worked with in the past!  They seem so eager to learn and are (for the most part) SUCH good listeners.  I love the unexpected diversity of our class, too.  They each come from such unique backgrounds which makes every day fun-to learn more about them.  

I was able to learn MOST of their names in the first day, and after day 2 I knew them all.  I was pretty impressed with myself because learning names is something I struggle with.  It helps that we don't have anyone with the same name.  

I received my first love note on my very first day.  I will keep it and look at it on my down days.  Not only is the message sweet, but her spelling is what makes it awesome! haha!!

"Ms. Fanelli You are the bust techer"

Funny Stuff:

I was pretty impressed with how quickly the kids were able to remember my name.  BUT, I was also quite impressed with the versions of my name that I heard.  Instead of Ms. Fanelli, I heard:

- Ms. Finally

-Ms. Finy-elly

-Ms. Financy

-Ms. Fritelli

-Ms. Felly

-Ms. Frinelli

-Ms. Frilly

I bet there's a few I'm missing.  The creativity is awesome!!  I heard "Ms. Financy" the most from the same little girl, so much that my CT accidentally called me that once.  I finally started telling kids that I'm Ms. Smelly Fanelli (to help them remember)…but then I quickly stopped that when I realized what I was getting myself into, whoops!!

Week 3 begins tomorrow, and so does the beginning of the REAL stress this semester.  My teacher work sample and capstone project.  These will be the things that keep me up late at night, and possibly the things that make me go into hiding until graduation…we'll see how I end up handling it!