New Year Update

Things were pretty busy for me for the remainder of student teaching, so I never gave an update on how that went, but here ya go...

Mrs. Thomas was a great mentor teacher. She worked with me well in that she let me do my own thing, which was pretty different from when I was at Jefferson Jr. High. There, everything needed to be extremely organized and I needed to follow a lot of the same teaching methods that Mrs. Brighton did with her classes. At Payson, however, I was free to discipline and manage and teach however I felt fit each objective for the day, as long as the students learned what was necessary. After picking up all 5 classes I did fall back on some of Mrs. Thomas' usual assignments and asked for insight on activities she'd normally do because I was running out of creative ideas, but she was more than willing to help me out!

I am so grateful to have been able to work with two very different, effective teachers within the FACS/CTE programs at my assigned schools. I learned so much from each of them that I will definitely take with me throughout my teaching career.

I graduated on December 19th in the Family and Consumer Science Education major at BYU. It was a goal of mine to graduate from BYU since I was in 5th grade, and it's nice to have actually achieved one of my long-term goals!!!

Now I am a substitute teacher in 3 local school districts, and fortunately I have been able to get a job most days so far. It's nice to be teaching again, but earning money this time! It'd definitely been different with me bringin' home the bacon instead of my husband this semester, but it has also been nice because I no longer have to take my work home with me!
That's kind of the nice thing about subbing, that I show up, teach the kids (sometimes dealing with devil children) and come home to do nothing but unwind... planning never to deal with the worst children again. I can also pick and choose what schools I go to, and what grades. It's been an adjustment teaching in elementary schools after having only taught junior high and high schoolers... and preschoolers. I refuse to teach Kindergartners for right now. I'm just not ready for that. I've already gotten a couple jobs lined up at a junior high. One being long-term for a Clothing/Child Development teacher taking maternity leave next month :)

All in all, life is grand. It's different, but I've been adjusting just fine!