Sad sight
After a very long day today, I came home about 8:30 PM. Sitting on the cement wall near where I parked was a young woman and a baby in a stroller. She looked very sad. She asked me if there was a shelter nearby. I told her I did not know, but give me a minute and I'd get inside and look for one on the internet. Alan and I searched for shelters, and found a 211 hotline to call. We found the information for the girl and went outside to find out more information. The woman and baby had moved further down the hill and were now joined by a young man. He avoided our gaze and didn't talk to us. We told the girl that there was a shelter downtown. She asked if we had the address. She assured us she had bus fare. We went inside and printed out the map and address and gave them $5. I hope that they make it there alright.
California is burning
Pretty much all of SoCal is on fire. I have to drive toward the Stevenson Ranch, Saugus, Santa Clarita, Valencia, and Porter Ranch fires to get to student teaching. Seems really stupid to drive toward fires, but seems that we are surrounded by them anyway. Luckily, we aren't burning. My friend Pat in San Diego area was forced to evacuate and as of last night my classmate Katie's family might be soon. My master teacher's friends had to evacuate from their home near Malibu. Luckily the Porter Ranch fire is out because that was just across the freeway from where I do student teaching. I'm hoping that the Santa Clarita, Saugus, and Stevenson Ranch fires stay north and don't head south. If they head south then they invade where I'm student teaching. If I get displaced again I'm not going to be happy. My classmates joke that they'll make me do this quarter again. I told them I'd quit before that happened. I better get an A for effort and flexibility. Today I wrote 4 lesson plans for 4 kids I've never taught. I don't think I made one of the lessons difficult enough and I also feel like they have not one bit of creativity to them. Oh well. I'm tired, my throat hurts, and my nose is bloody. I have no idea how people that are actually in the middle of the fires or have asthma are surviving. This morning I left the house at 9:30 and the sky was blue overhead and you could see the smoke from the Malibu and/or Topanga fires in the West and I think I may have been seeing the Lake Arrowhead smoke to the East. Either way...by 11:30 the smoke had rolled in over West LA and the sky was no longer blue but a orangish grayish color as the winds must have picked up and blew the smoke our way. I know it's no comparison to what everyone else is enduring, but the closest fire to us is 20 miles away. That's my perspective on how bad these fires are.
Meili in her new coat
Life update
So the new student teaching placement is going well I think. Sandy is a doll and she is really trying to help me out. Bryan and Sarah are enroute to Chicago for their big move. I'm excited for them. Fresno is not where the 3 of us wanted to stay, it was a stepping stone to something better. We made fabulous friends that we will always love and stay in contact with (even if not as much as we want to). I agree with their blog that if we aren't moving forward, we are moving backwards. There are so many things I want to do and explore in life and staying in one place doesn't always offer that to you. That's all I've got on now besides school work that is piling up higher and higher. I have a large paper due in a couple weeks that I haven't even attempted to start. My Intro to Vision midterm is next week. I have a lady coming to observe my teaching style next week. I started on the homework for this week for the vision class and I must say I don't think I understand it. Doesn't help that it is an online class so there's no lecture to help you understand. YAY! I've got 2 study groups planned for early next week to get ready for this test. It's going to be a busy week.
Student teaching drama update
My master teacher's ankle is not broken. Hooray! But she will be off work for at least one more week, maybe 2. Boo! So effective today, I will have a new master teacher. My new teacher is my instructor from my blindfold class this summer. That's the good part. The bad part is that I will start traveling to the San Fernando Valley. That means I have to take the 405 better known as the slow-o-5. My commute's gonna be a bitch. I've sent out emails and made phone calls to get my assignment's due dates moved. Since I'm starting over, getting some of the assignments done on time won't be quality work. All these assignments are going in my portfolio, so they've gotta be at least a little organized and well planned. Ugh!
Freakishly odd
Does anyone else that is a Big 10 fan find it incredibly creepy that Illinois is ranked #1 in the Big 10 right now? What the hell? Not only that...Indiana isn't doing too shabby either. Did hell freeze over and no one told me? Alan blames it on global warming. Your thoughts?
Warning! Long ass blog.
So Monday our class found out that all of us enrolled in a grad directed study class that we weren't supposed to be in. Now I must say that I thought that it was really premature for us to take this class, but what do I know right? This class was to prepare us to take the comp exams (the exam I have to pass to get my Master's). The comp exams this class was talking about was in November (I take mine in June), but all of us figured it was on our list classes for this semester so we need to sign up. This class's assignments include answering weekly discussion questions, filling out study guides for 7 conditions that make you eligible for special education services, and answering a timed question that is similar to a question you might see on the comp exam. Sounds not too bad right? Last week the discussion question was about IDEA and we don't learn about that until week 3 of this quarter. So all of us looked dumb there. Then each study guide took me an hour to complete. Then the timed question was on a condition that was barely touched on in the book. All of us were beyond stressed out because the class was a ton of work and we hadn't even learned the info for the class yet. It was the first time I thought that this is not worth it and I could just drop out of this program and continue OT. It's not worth this (and it turns out everyone else was thinking of quitting too.) So Monday on my way to class, I get a phone call from Kristina. She's all excited. All of us signed up for the wrong section and we spent hours (7 hours filling out study guides, 2 hours at a study group trying to answer the practice question, and who knows how long participating on the discussion) for nothing. We were pretty much idiots and signed up for something that we don't have to take in June if we don't want to, let alone now. Huge relief!
Then Tuesday I had my first distance learning chat for my class that coincides with my student teaching. It was very cold feeling. I am disturbed that someone that lives in Pismo is grading my lesson plans when she's never seen me or any of my students.
Then Wednesday morning I was supposed to meet my master teacher at Marshall HS at 11:00. She called me and left me a message at 10. I didn't get the message of course, so when I arrived at 10:45, she was in the nurses office. She tripped and fell on campus and sprained her ankle severely and was filling out an incidence report and workman's comp paperwork. She was leaving to go to the hospital for xrays. I was on my own that day. She had me cancel one of my students because the lesson that we were going to do I didn't know how to do by myself, but my other student I had to teach alone. So I walked down the street to get her car and parked it in front of the school because she couldn't walk well. So then I was on my own teaching a student 2 weeks ago I had never met and I had only taught twice before. It went alright I think. But what do I know? I've only been doing this 2 weeks.
Wednesday night was another distance chat for my intro to vision class. It's and hour long chat and people spent the first half hour wasting time by having their own conversations instead of chatting about the class. My O&M class were texting and calling each other and I was talking to my master teacher on the phone and calling the program director while chatting and texting classmates. Complete waste of my time. Especially since I developed a cold during the day on Wednesday and I felt like shit.
So it was decided that my master teacher is off work until at least Monday. The xray she had done was inconclusive. She may have a fracture. So for now I am on my own for the rest of the week. Today I taught 3 kids and tomorrow I teach someone I have never really taught (yippee!) and I think 2 other girls (I think). I'm not allowed to take anyone off campus so that is going to be a long boring day. Hopefully she doesn't have a fracture because then I'm ultimately screwed and be out a master teacher. You can't teach O&M on crutches, and following me around while I teach 1/2 of her caseload is going to be impossible. She's calling me on Sunday so I will keep the blog updated as I have time for developments in my adventures in student teaching.
