Week Eight: Apr. 2-8

Fiona Tumulty

Well we’ve made it through our first lead week and now we’re down to the home stretch until spring break! Every day this week is literally just a countdown for me to make it to the end of the week. Tomorrow is our JK class field trip, Thursday my mom arrives in Athens, and Friday vacation officially starts! The kids seem to be really enjoying all of my activities over the past weeks, and even though behavior management can still be a big challenge with this group things are going really great. Now that I’ve implemented all of my edTPA lessons and the end of lead weeks is in sight, I’m a lot less stressed, but there’s still a lot to do this week!

As I mentioned, tomorrow is our JK class field trip. We are going to Pedopolis, which is a children’s learning center in Athens where we will learn about health and nutrition (this is the current science unit in JK). Everyone is really excited for it and I hope we learn a lot! It sounds like the bus ride will be a long one, so that should make for an interesting journey with 14 energetic preschoolers. While it’s not the same as leading a full day of planned learning experiences, tomorrow will be a different kind of stress because I will be spending my day trying to keep everyone together and doing endless head checks as if I was Ms. Ungermeyer from the Lizzie McGuire movie #scaryheadchecklady.

In case it wasn’t crystal clear already, I am so ready for spring break. My mom is coming to visit and I get to show her around Athens, then we’re going to Santorini for a few days, and will end our trip spending Easter weekend in Amsterdam! I will of course be taking too many pictures, so stay tuned for those.

 

Lauren Montagna

Tomorrow cannot come soon enough.  While I am obviously excited for spring break, the kids are even more so.  There have been all kinds of emotions with the impending break and a few meltdowns.  Me too, kids, me too.  

As we are closing out the week, I am implementing my edTPA lessons.  So far, so good!  The students were surprisingly calm and attentive as I babbled away about key vocabulary and words to signal event order (despite their sometimes blank stares).  My lesson tomorrow will definitely out these skills to the test, so I guess we will see tomorrow!

The rest of the week went pretty positively.  It is still weird to be that head teacher in a classroom that is not yours, but the support and response from students and teaching team have made it more comfortable.  It will certainly be interesting to revert back into the role of assistant teacher (or the non-lead).  The next three weeks will certainly be a nice break from all of this stress!

Aside from the classroom, Fiona and I got our monthly passes this past week!  We met a nicer woman that gave us student passes without a hard time!!! Yayy!!!  I am certainly very excited to not use them as I will be away for spring break for the next few days.  I am super excited to see my family after eight long weeks and travel to Rome and Santorini (humble brag).  See you on the flippity flip, Athens!

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