Sunday, January 19, 2014

New Semester...New Adventures!

This semester has sure been one of my favorites. One of the reasons being I get to live with Erica! It has been so fun, especially because we have 18 months worth of catching up to do! I am so thankful I get to live with her! Our roommates are all wonderful! I love them all! 

Classes are great, I am really involved and my teachers are all great and fun! I joked with my mom earlier this week that this is the first semester I don't want to change my major. My classes are all super fun, and I am finally into what I actually want to do which is teach English! People always tell me how crazy I am for wanting to pursue this, but my only response is I just know I am suppose to do this. I go with what I feel not what people say which I feel like is a good way of living life! 

This semester I get to actually go into the schools and work with kids! I am so excited! Because I am a secondary ed. major they think we don't need as much experience in the schools so I only get to go in the actual schools a couple of semesters but I am so exited for this one, it is going to be awesome! 

The set up is really different, we get into groups of four and then within that four we have a team partner! My partner's name is Natalie and she is AWESOME! I can tell it is going to be a great semester, she is so creative and friendly and energetic, just what I need! :] 

The first week the entire class was in charge of putting together an entire program for the kids to go through. The guidelines were we had to create stations, of which we had to follow certain topics and be prepared to teach more than 200 hundred kids a day for twenty mins each. It was two days long and it was definitely tiring! I never realized how many kids were in a tiny school...that's Rexburg for ya! The general topic is "Our Story." They are focusing on American History and we were revolving around colonial times. I don't know who learned more, me or the kids! ;]

Natalie and I were assigned the pass times and activities station. I was so excited for this because I knew there was so much we could do. We had two days to prepare and make sure our lists of supplies were given to our teacher so we would have everything we needed. We decided to be different from every other group and have the kids go through a time machine back to 1788.
 I was from the future...my name was Ziggy, and Natalie was Mary from 1788. 


We were so lucky and Natalie had a ton of old toys at her house and we found random things to make our time machine, and it was a hit! We were only allowed to take 12-15 kids at a time and I tell ya we were over every time because kids loved it so much! It made me feel good that kids wanted to come to ours, but I am betting it was just all the colors and the sign that said time machine that drew them all in. We taught the kids that people who lived in that time did not have electronics and games to play like we do today. In those times you just played with what you had. So we put those creative little minds to work. We had rocks, sticks, rope and strips of fabric and they had to come up with a game. We were surprised by how much they enjoyed it and how creative they got. They thought of everything from tug of war, to games that they came up with from pure imagination. It was very impressive! We were pretty proud of it, teachers complimented us all day both days. We felt pretty accomplished. 










I got to come home this weekend and we were sure busy...new carpet and paint...it was exciting stuff, I'm sure your just dying to read about! 

Also this is a blog my mom showed me today, it is so inspiring and faith building. I read the first one and couldn't stop. She is so amazing for the strength she has, take a look I promise you won't regret it! 
http://themomentswestand.blogspot.com/ 



No comments: