Everything in the Deshazer household has been quite swell. Steven has just been working full time at Food For Health, and I have been getting my butt kicked by summer practicum!
Here's a little background information about practicum.... all throughout the Special Ed program they build this up like it is going to be the most horrendous few weeks of your life! They make sure we have nightmares about it a year before we even start it. BUT I've made it!! Well not quite, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and boy is it glorious!
Summer practicum is really our first opportunity as student teachers to utilize and implement all the things we've been learning in classes. Giving assessments, writing TONS of lesson plans, Creating a unit framework. It's all the big and scary stuff until you do it and find out "Hey, I'm kind of good at this!" :)
A few weeks ago (before practicum consumed my summer) I never would have assumed it would be such a powerful learning experience. I thought I was just going to dig my claws in and hope someone pulled me to the other side. But guess what? I'm learning, I'm growing, and I'm loving (more than ever) what it is that I'm doing!! I have grown to absolutely adore these students in a mere 3 weeks. I have gotten to know them personally and to see how I can best push them toward success. It is beautiful and I can't help but thank my Heavenly Father every day for not giving up on stubborn Breanna and making sure I end up exactly where I belong!
I wanted to share a few stories with you from my practicum experience... Some of those "kids say the darnedest things" moments I've had so far!
The first one happened yesterday while I was working on a place value lesson. The two students I was working with were supposed to write down a three digit number on their white boards and then show the boards and see whose number was bigger. The first time they wrote the exact same number! So I kinda chuckled and said "Well? Which number is bigger?" One student quickly saw that they were the same, but the other student was thinking about it for a second and responded with "OH! MINE!" ( You should also know that this specific lesson was being observed by my supervisor and I get closely graded on how I handle incorrect responses SO of course my heart starts pounding and I had a mini panic attack meanwhile silently wondering "oh no! Do you really not see that they're the same? My lesson must be too hard!") And so I took a deep breath and said "Ok let's look a little closer." So I put the two white boards right next to each other and one digit at a time showed him that they were the exact same. Impatiently at this point he said "Yeah....but mine is much bigger". I'm not sure how it clicked but at some point I said "ohhhhh You mean you wrote your number bigger, don't you?" And he looked at me a little annoyed, "yeah. He wrote his little. Mine is bigger"
The second one is fantastic. And when I think about it now, a few days later, I still chuckle about it!
We were on the playground and I lifted one little boy up onto the monkey bars, but his arms were too short to reach the next bar so he just kinda hung there limp. I asked him "What are you gonna do now?" He thinks for a second, gets a huge grin on his face, and then lets go falling to the ground. Mid fall he yells "BACKFLIP!!" and after landing stands up to look at me with so much excitement and confidence in his eyes there was no way I could tell him that yelling backflip while you fall isn't quite the same as actually doing a backflip! After that he wanted to try again, as would you after doing such a flawless backflip, and this time he yells "FRONT FLIP!!" and again just looked like he had defeated Voldemort himself! :)
On top of being pretty busy writing lesson plans and spotting backflips, Steven and I actually got another dog. You can make as many "just have kids already" jokes as you want! We are happy about that decision. It was mostly for Oakley. The poor dog has SO much energy that Steven and I can't even begin to drain it. We could take her on 5 walks a day and she would still want to PLAY!! So we needed someone as fast as her and energetic as her to play with. Needless to say we found a sufficient amount of energy in a 6 month old pup named Thorin. (His name was Buddy when we got him, but we were not even about to try having Oakley and Buddy!)
Meet THORIN!
He Loves playing chase with Oakley, eating my rasperries, peeing on EVERYTHING (outdoors, of course), and chompin' on Ponytails! :)
He also likes cuddling, but only after 10 p.m and only on TOP of Oakley.
He Hates being splashed with water, being alone, and sitting still long enough to get petted!
I think this picture perfectly sums up the amount of crazy that is present in the Deshazer home right now and it's a great note to end on! :)
I would LOVE to stay and chat your ear off, but I still have a bunch of lesson plans to write, so it will have to wait.
Thanks for stopping by!
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