I Am a Real Teacher!

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This morning I accepted a job. I can now finally call myself a real teacher! One week from today I will be meeting my students. On August 1st, school starts. I'm so excited! Next week will be filled with meetings and preparing my classroom. This is going to move quickly, so I won't have too much time to make myself so nervous I'm sick. I tend to do that when I don't have something to do. Right now there is so much to do that I don't have time to drive myself crazy!

I will be teaching 5th and 6th grade social studies at a charter school near me. It is part time, which will actually work out nicely. I will have plenty of time for planning, preparing, and reflecting and still be able to get the sleep and exercise I need. It also gives me time to make the doctor appointments and schedule the medical tests required.

5th grade social studies was an area I REALLY enjoyed teaching during my student teaching and volunteer experiences. I'm looking forward to being able to spend more time in the subject area. In Arizona, 5th graders learn about American history from the Native Americans through the Civil War.

6th graders will be learning about "Sixth Grade History Strands emphasize World history from its earliest cultures through the Enlightenment, including the

early cultures of the Americas." This information was taken from the 6th grade social studies standards. I'm not as familiar with this set of standards, but I bet I will be by the end of next week! I did have fun teaching this for almost a week as a substitute last year. The students were learning about ancient Greek. Very interesting!

Part of why I wanted to teach is because I enjoy learning so much myself. I will definitely get that opportunity because I know NOTHING about world history. I'll be spending plenty of time teaching myself in order to teach the lessons in 6th grade. I'm not afraid of that, though. Some of my best lesson plans during student teaching came because I had to do so much research to be prepared.

Today I am starting to get ready to move into my classroom and for the open house next Friday. I will get to meet my students and their parents on that day. Three days later, on Monday, August 1st, school starts. I am so excited! Tomorrow I will be going shopping for a couple new outfits. I'm actually looking forward to shopping. I normally stay as far away from clothing stores as I can. I saw a super cute pants suit hanging in the window of Dress Barn last weekend. I'm hoping it looks as nice as me as it does on the mannequin!

I've already spent $5 on my new classroom, too. About 10 minutes after I accepted the job I got an email from Scholastic that had several ebooks on sale for around a dollar each. I bought a couple social studies books so I can begin going through them and doing some planning. Oh, I've got so much to do! Fortunately the principal told me in the interview yesterday that he likes to work with first year teachers and help them develop their skills. I'm ready for this adventure!

“I’m sharing my awesome with Momma Made It Look Easy and you can too.” This is one of the most awesomes I could imagine!