Routine

Is it weird to say that I love the routine of elementary school? Even though school is madness about 67% of the time, the other 33% of the time totally keeps me sane. I love having a routine for the kids and it (surprisingly) makes the days and weeks go by much faster.

Speaking of those days and weeks going by…. I only have 17 days left of student teaching. HOW CRAZY IS THAT? And a better question… WHAT THE HECK AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE AFTER THAT? Obviously, I will spend one more semester taking classes and finishing up my degree. In the spring I will graduate with a major in elementary education, a minor in Spanish, and endorsements in reading and coaching. Then I have to be a big kid, like a real grown up teacher lady. With like a job. And probably an apartment and stuff. I’m not sure that I’m ready for that. How will I decide where to go? It’s been insane thinking about the preceeding questions and talking them over with my family and college friends. In a few more months we will all go off our separate ways. There will be no more walking down the hall or up a couple flights of stairs to visit everyone. There’s talk of North Carolina, California, Pensylvania, Colorado and all sorts of places. I’M NOT READY FOR THIS. But I suppose that I have a few months to prepare. Starting by setting my schedule for spring (my final) semester (tomorrow morning at 7… bleh).

Adding to the fact that I’m (willingly or unwillingly) becoming a big girl (adult?) is the fact that I passed the second part of my Praxis II test! Which means that yes, I am smarter than a 6^th grader (questionable in math though…) and that I am one step closer to licensure in the state of Iowa. Unfortunately, I am still waiting on the results of the first part of the test (PLT). It should be any day now. CRIPES.

Ps….

Bahahahaha. Funny every time. 

Bonus things.

I am SO ready to be just a college student again. I love teaching, I really, really do, but it has been INSANE trying to be an awesome teacher lady, college student, college athlete, education club officer, roommate, girlfriend, sister, daughter, etc…. and trying to do them all super well. Mostly it results in little to no sleep (pretty normal for those of you who know me). Also totally exhausting. Then again, I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t get to do this forever. This is my last year of doing all of the things. My last year. Yes, after this I will more than likely be a busy teacher lady and coach and many more things, but it will never be the same as it is right now. (Sorry guys, apparently I’m feeling extremely sentimental right now.)

But really, I was thinking about it all earlier. This will likely be the last year that I live in Sioux City. Not that I love Sioux City, but it’s been my home for 4 years. BCU has been wonderful to me, and I’ve never been more glad that I came. (Shoutout to 18-year-old-super-unsure- and-indecisive Jayna who made one of the best (and scariest) decisions to come here. Well done.)

As Grace would say, “MEEEEMORRRIIESSSS!”

And on that note, here are some photos from memories made this past week… enjoy :)

 My sister, the cheerleader. And of course, my beautiful momma. 

My sister, the dingus. Gosh I love that little nugget.

 The pre-picture...

The picture. Love these girls. 

 I love the friends that might as well be family. I've been blessed with a lot of them....

See what I mean? 

Until tomorrow...

Peace, love, and sappy reminiscing, 

Jayna

PS- My class is STILL waiting on our pen pal letters from Nevada. Darn USPS.

But Really, The Worst Blogger Ever

… okay, I know I’m really not the worst blogger ever, but I’ve been pretty stinking bad this week. It has been a very crazy, busy week. Track practices have finally picked up which is very exciting, but also highly inconvenient. Our practice time is usually at 3:30 or 4:15. I can’t leave school until 3:45 and I usually need to stay behind so that I can be prepared and planned out for upcoming lessons. I’ve also been attempting to have a social life (ehhh), and have been an avid Charger cheerleader in the final matches of volleyball season and for upcoming wrestling season. (I can’t wait for wrestling!!) (And basketball too :))

Okay, anyway I really have been making an effort the past few days to get the blog up. Here’s the proof…. The drafts of Wednesday and Thursday’s blogs. I had even started on today’s already!

Wednesday:

Our journal prompt today was to write about your favorite book. Here are blurbs from two of my favorite writers, Breakfast Boy and The Ranter.

“My favorite boob is Green Eggs an Ham. It is funy. I wont to eat Greer eggs. Sam I am is funy!”

“My favorite book is Click Clack moo Cows that tpye. I dont know how cows know how too spell and tpye? It was funny when they wrote a letter too farmer brown. Saying were closed no milk too day and it said to eggs too.”

Thursday:

HAPPY WEEN!

“Halloween is the funest holiday because you get to where costume’s and you get candy!”

My kids are so stinking sugared up. Good thing we didn’t plan on learning much today!

Friday:

Apos’trophe’s

This week we have been learning about apostrophes. Apostrophes are a hard concept for second graders so we have spent a lot of time talking about ownership, singular words and plural words. (We have not addressed contractions yet.) The kids are catching on, but there has also been a hilarious amount of apostrophe abuse in our journals.

Despite how crazy these kids can make me…. I do love second grade.

Here’s what else happened today…

We had to do the mass today for All Saint’s Day. The kids did an awesome job of reading and singing and participating, but especially reading. There were some hard words like Solemnity, extraordinary, and surprisingly enough Lamb and pure were tricky for them to spit out. But they practiced and made me very proud today :)

The cutest faithful journal ever…

“I contit wate for November 1^st it is all saints day we have mass saints day is very fun. Some days’ are fun like Halloween and crismis so is sanse day to! Saints day is all abawt all the saints that follow Gods 3 cmandmits. Saints are holle pepolle in the world and they blev in God.”

Also, one of my students (Breakfast Boy) has been journaling about a pet lizard that he got for his birthday. Today, Breakfast Boy (who sits in the front row) quietly gets my attention and says, “Miss Specht, I have to tell you something.” Then he proceeds to tell me, “We found out that my lizard’s not a boy; it’s a girl.” I asked how he found out and he replied, “She had babies.” So now instead of one birthday lizard, my Breakfast Boy has 7. When I asked, he said that they were keeping them for now and that he changed the lizard’s name to Mrs. Leatherhead.

It’s so hard not to laugh out loud sometimes. It was impossible when he told me that the new name was Mrs. Leatherhead.

So! I have exciting news! Next week is my last full week! Of teaching absolutely everything! So that we be really cool! Also kind of sad. It’s crazy how fast this semester has gone by!

Speaking of almost being done, I am almost (almost) done with all of my Praxis testing. I take the last part of the test tomorrow morning at 8. Say a prayer for me please!

Until Monday,

Peace, love, and surprise sex changes,

Jayna

I'm the Worst Blogger Ever.

More to come tomorrow...
and I promise that it won't suck!

Peace, love, and rainchecks,
Jayna

The Longest Day of the Week

I’m so sorry my loyal bloggers! Tuesdays are the longest days of the week. Not really because of school because we do have music and 45 minutes of library and computer. But no, after school is what makes things impossibly long. Our student teaching night class is held on Tuesday nights from 4:30 to 5:30, which means that I miss practice. So after class, I get to go lift solo (with another team). Today that team was boys basketball. I love their sound track, but it’s hard to lift with all of them around, plus I don’t want to show them off by out lifting some ;). Kidding! (Mostly.) Anyway after working out I took a nice nap and then headed to the NFC for wrestle offs. (I love wrestling.) In all the crazy, I totally (almost) forgot to blog! Luckily I had already written down a few funny journal entries from today. The kids were supposed to write about their favorite book… here is the aftermath from two of my favorite writers, Breakfast Boy and The Ranter.

“My favorite boob is Green Eggs an Ham. It is funy. I wont to eat Greer eggs. Sam I am is funy!” (Careless, careless spelling. Hilarious ideas.)

“My favorite book is Click Clack moo Cows that tpye. I dont know how cows know how too spell and tpye? It was funny when they wrote a letter too farmer brown. Saying were closed no milk too day and it said to eggs too.” (I just love the way that he writes.)

Since it’s late o’clock, I’m going to keep this short and sweet and head off to bed!

Goodnight until tomorrow…

Peace, love, and (almost) hump day,

Jayna

Right On Time

… or a couple of minutes late. That’s about how my Monday has been. We were a couple of minutes late starting math, a few minutes late to lunch, right on time for art, and a few minutes late getting ready to go home. Sheesh. I’ve been trying to watch the clock, but I also (sometimes) forget that it takes a long time (sometimes a very long time) for us as a class of 2^nd graders to get anywhere.

Monday has been a pretty typical day, with the exception of a few students being stubborn and difficult. About 7 students got the privilege (misfortune?) of staying in for some of their recess to finish or correct their work. And we did have one with water works. They are so stinking cute, and you really want to feel sorry for them, but some of my students are just plain stubborn and stinkers. I can’t let myself pity them too much…. However…

After a long discussion with my rockstar teacher today, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on families. Each student comes from a unique family situation. I really believe that the core of each person, the heart, the root of their being comes from the family. Parents need to cherish, encourage, and challenge their children to grow everyday. Not just to become better students, but better people. I don’t know, I suppose I could rant on and on about the importance of parents and siblings and a positive, loving, attentive but disciplined family, but there’s no point. I just sympathize for some of my students who seem to be lacking somewhere in the family or personal life. I realize that in my school, familial issues are less common, but I still just feel so bad for the sweet little kids who sometimes don’t have a choice or know better because of their family and background.

I suppose, as my teachers often say, “That’s just the way it is.”

Deep sigh.

The only good news about today (other than that it is Monday and I love Mondays) is that I have all of this week planned out so I don’t have anything to do! The bad part is that with my lesson planning done, I should be working on my electronic portfolio. Which I (REALLY) don’t want to. But I suppose “that’s just the way it is.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace, love, and homework,

Jayna

Busy

Hello All! Happy Weekend! I'm sorry that this post is late (kinda cool, ya'll get some Saturday insight) but as you can probably infer (2nd grade skill) from the title of this post, I have been very busy. All that being unmotivated coupled with the busy-ness of being an active college student really took a toll on me. I was so behind that I stayed at school until 6pm yesterday. 6 pm ON A FRIDAY PEOPLE. Gah, here's to a lesson learned and to never doing that again.... At least not until I'm a real, certified teacher lady.

Other than staying ridiculously late, school yesterday was great. The kids were well behaved, I was planned out (at least 1/2 a step ahead haha), and it was nice to get Friday wrapped up. Of course with next week being Halloween and our All Saint's Day Mass, it's bound to be pure madness. Typical. Good thing I've already got everything planned out!

Oh well, I will save Monday's troubles for Monday. (Matthew 6:34)

On to this weekend! Last night Boyfriend came down to visit. We had a great time watch the vb team sweep CU in three, then headed over for some free ice skating at IBP. We laughed (a lot) and had (a lot of) fun. It was a great way to end my busy Friday just by hanging out with him and some other BC friends. 

Tonight I'm off again to watch some BC home volleyball! It's senior night, and beyond crazy to think that it should be my senior night too. I miss volleyball and I miss my teammates. I'm proud of them and everything they have done and accomplished both on and off the court throughout these past 4 years. And even though I'm not a part of the team anymore, I'm proud of what I've done too both with them on the court and campus, and without them on the track and in the classroom. For me, there will always be a special place in my heart for the 6 BC recruits from the class of 2010, soon to be the graduating class of 2014. 

A picture is worth a thousand words... here's a few thousand. 

My volleyball girls as Sophomores. Love, love, love you all. 

 A couple of ice skating freaks :) 

And hopefully this loads as a funny video of me and Boyfriend spinning on ice last night. He is obviously very graceful. 

Until Monday...

Peace, love, and relaxation,

Jayna

The Ugly Truth

 SPOILER ALERT: Student teaching is not all fun and games. Definitely not. At all. It’s hard. You have to jump through a lot of hoops. You are still a guest in someone else’s classroom although you are technically in control of it. Student teaching is full of trials, tribulations, and triumphs. It’s expected that we, as teacher candidates, struggle. It’s also expected that we thrive, even if some nights we cry over lessons gone wrong or overwhelming stress. Such is the norm in the life and future career we are preparing to embrace. And such are the feelings reflected in my blog. So there’s that.

Today, was one of those “overwhelming stress” days that I was referring to. It’s ten o’clock at night (aka late o’clock) and I am just finally sitting down to relax for the day. I’ve been running from school, to education department meetings, to coaches, to off campus parties (not the fun, 21 year old kind), to the Y, to pick up dinner, and now I’m home. Needless to say, it’s been a rough day. (Insert deep breath here.) Tomorrow I will plan for next week. All of it. Even if it means skipping track practice, which I really don’t want to. But I will.

Growing up sucks.

But teaching does have its perks. Like reading hilarious journals that literally make me laugh out loud and other entries that melt my heart.

“I like to play football with Sean, Jonny, and Jake. Teams are normaly me and Jake agianst. Sean and Jonny. Sometimes its me and Jonny on a team. Agianst Sean and Jake. One time we played me and Sean aginst Jake and Jonny. That wasnt fair at all.” (Alright Mr. Athleticism, I see you working. :))

“I like to play with Nora. She is my best friend. Do you have a best friend at coleg. I hope you have friends. Do you have 10 or 1 best friend?” (What a sweetie. She’s worried that I don’t have friends… with good reason maybe. Teaching doesn’t leave much time for friends at the moment!)

Alright friends (wait, I do have friends! My readers!) , I’m out. It’s time to write out the full plan for tomorrow and to fill in the details of a (hopefully) super cool Spanish lesson. Let’s do thissssss!!

Until tomorrow,

Peace, love, and reality checks,

Jayna

Ps- Sorry Mom.