What are you all up to? Doing anything fun? What's keeping you busy? I am having a super-busy semester, and I am seriously counting on you all to post here so I have some interesting reading during my breaks!! :) So, here's my CRAZY schedule: I have my practicum at Hawken from 8:15-11:45. Right now I'm just observing, and trying to learn, but later on this semester, I get to do some co-teaching, and then I teach solo! So there's lesson planning, and grading, and copying, and whatever little classroom things I can help with... It's not too much right now, but today was only the second day. ;) So, that's Monday-Thursday. Then on Monday-Thursday nights, I have classes from 4:30-8:30. I just have one class each night, and that's good and bad. The good part is that I always have 1 whole week to complete the assignments. The bad part is that each class is 4 HOURS LONG. They give us a 10 minute break every 90 minutes or so, but still... it's a long time. :) Then for the next few weeks I have Conflict Resolution Training. It's an extra thing that the university offers us for free. We get an endorsement on our license that says that we're certified to set up peer counseling, and to have conflict resolution meetings, and to help set up an advisory program. Only about 20 people from my class are doing it, so I guess we'll have an edge over the competition in the tight job market around here! But it's on Fridays and Saturdays from 8-5. That's a really long day of exploring feelings, and talking about conflicts, and going over handouts and groupings.... But after CRT is done, I will have three day weekends nearly every week! Except for a few, when I have seminar with my practicum supervisor. She's so cool, though - she arranged to have them at a coffee shop near the school where I'm working, so that's so much easier than lots of other student teachers I've talked to! It's a good thing that I have all that extra time on the weekends, because so far, my professors seem to love big projects. I like big projects to some degree, because it means no exams. On the other hand, the overall semester workload becomes pretty heavy. :) Did you know that in ed school they teach us that tests are bad, that they are inaccurate measures of knowledge? There's all this research to back that up. So they advocate the big project now, and they're putting that into practice with us, for sure! I almost never have exams of any kind. It's kind of neat. :) So... how many more weeks until May? ;)