My little friend Landon

I got to hang out with Landon for a few hours while everyone else went to the temple. He is a pretty funny talkative kid so we had a lot of fun together. He watched Little Einsteins while I finished getting ready. Then after that we played with some play dough for awhile. I actually suggested it because Landon got a sweet Playdough kit for Christmas and frankly I wanted to play with it. So we set it up and he made himself a balloon. After awhile he told me he had to go to the bathroom so I took him to the bathroom but when we got there he had to run back and get his balloon first. While he was going potty he told me that I needed to go find Emma (his toy dog that he takes everywhere). He was on the potty for quite some time so this took up a big chunk of time. Afterwards we played with some more playdough then he told me that he wanted to dance to some Christmas music. He specifically requested "rocking around Christmas tree", so luckily Jess and Shane have a Landon playlist on thier ipod and we rocked out to that song. Then he requested Jingle Bells and Polka (by Jim Reeves, I'm glad Jess and Shane have taught him to be a Jim Reeves fan.) The rest of the family got home later but lucky for me I was his favorite for the rest of the day, he's my favorite too.

Catchin up

It has been awhile since I have written, which is no good since I am supposed to be writing about 3 times a week...whoops! Life in Utah is moving pretty fast but is still lots of fun. The last BYU football home game was the weekend of Thanksgiving and BYU came out victorious over Utah. It was a pretty sweet game that came down to the final seconds....those are always the most exciting. Here are a couple pictures from the game. It was freezing, especially since we were in the shade the whole time. I'm pretty sure I had 15 layers on and I was still cold!

We were down by something, and it was 4th and 18 with only a little bit of time left and Hall threw a long pass down the field to Collie. And then we scored. (Don't worry, I have no intentions of becoming a sports writer because clearly I have no idea what I am talking about here. But it was sweet nonetheless).

Thanksgiving at the Terry home was a lot of fun, they took good care of me. I even got to take a nap while the food was being prepared. Jerika and I had taken a break for a little bit and were watching some show on tv, and I was completely out in about two seconds. She was nice and let me sleep but I felt bad when I woke up and most of the cooking was done!

I have officially left the elementary schools and am now back in regular school. I already miss my little fourth graders even with their bad attitudes. I have decided to stick around BYU for a little bit longer and get my early childhood endorsement. I'm hoping everything will work out there, that I can get in the classes I need and such. It will be quite a bit of work trying to take all the classes in one semester this winter, but I just decided that now was my chance to get it. So I won't be graduating til December or next April if I do an internship in the fall instead of student teaching.

Anyway, enough of the boring stuff. We went to Freeze fest last saturday. It was a ton of fun. They host it at Seven Peaks Ice Skating and they have all sorts of activities. We played broom hockey, listened to some bands, drank hot chocolate and got a couple of pictures with Cosmo. Jackie's goal was to get a picture with him before she graduated. She graduates this month so we got it just in the knick of time!

We went with BJ (who I work with, he is standing next to me on the end in this picture), and his two friends came along. We also went with a couple guys in our ward who were off getting hot chocolate at this time. We took a late night Wendy's run after this and stayed for awhile talking and things. It was a good time.

Yesterday we took a trip up to the basketball game in Salt Lake. BYU was playing #10 Michigan state and we were winning for the first half, but then lost in the second. We ended up lost by 7 but it was a pretty exciting game nonetheless. Jerika, Kimi and I decided to stay and do some shopping at gateway then we were going to go see the lights and possibly go to the Joseph Smith movie. However, we got word that it was snowing bad at point of the mountain so we decided to leave after about an hour of shoppping and head home before it got any worse. Kimi was a safe driver and we made it safely home. It was quite and enjoyable outing. That's all for now!

We all have our own hidden talents

This post is a little late, but I got observed on Monday again and it went great!! I was observed by both my main teacher and the facilitator and they both had great things to say about my teaching. It was the best CPAS score I have gotten since I have been observed. (I know a lot of you don't know what that means but basically they score me in 32 different areas and then average it). The kids were the most engaged that they ever have been and they were very enthusiastic so that really helped me. My teacher said he can tell that I am a natural and that I will be a phenomenal teacher. I don't know if he was sincere or if he was just saying that but it sure makes me feel good. Teaching is so hard, I am nervous about teaching but I figure as long as I can build relationships with the kids and they can trust me then I will be a fine.

Kids are so funny. Laura, the other BYU student that is teaching in my class, was talking to these two students and I happen to be near by so I overheard the conversation. Taylor, a girl in the class, was flaring her nostrils at Caleb, another student in my class. Caleb said "Woah, what are you doing with your nose?! How do you do that?!" After asking, Caleb gave a good honest effort but could not for the life of him flare his nostrils. Finally, to console him, Laura said "It's ok Caleb, we all have our own hidden talents". Caleb, with his head hung a little low, said "yeah, I guess that's right. I can make really good fart noises with my armpit" (excuse the word, I don't like that word I am just directly quoting here). It was rather funny, Caleb was dead serious here. I'm glad he felt good about his hidden talent.

Yesterday I took a trip to the dinosaur museum. I was excited to go, but once I got there I realized that it would probably have been more enjoyable if I didn't have to herd a bunch of fourth graders through it. They were actually pretty good it was just hectic trying to keep my group together and answer all the questions in the booklet they had. They were all so concerned about getting every answer. When I am a teacher, I am going to be modest in the number of questions I give. The questions were dumb and caused a headache for group leaders because we had to keep track and make sure every kid was getting the answer and 15 kids trying to crowd around one tiny sign is a wee bit difficult. All in all it was still fun to hang out with my kids other than in the classroom. I can't tell which ones like me and which ones hate my guts...oh well!

Persistence Pays

I had a rewarding teaching moment the other day. I have been working witht his girl in my class who has a pretty significant learning disability. As frustrating it is for me to try teaching her, I can't imagine what she has to go through trying to learn things in school. She is well behind her classmates despite the effort she puts into it. Over the last several years in school she has developed something called "learned helplessness". Either she has been told, or she has come to know through experience that no matter how hard she tries she isn't smart so she figures she just won't try since it yields the same result. Learned helpless is one of the most difficult things to deal with as a teacher. It's like pulling teeth. You push and push and push and the kid will not even give it an ounce of effort, they just won't budge.
Mr. Von was teaching a lesson on multiplying by 10. He was trying to teach students that if you break apart bigger numbers in multiplication that the equation becomes easier to solve. (For example, 3 x 40 you can just do 3 x4 then add the 0 after) He first wanted to show them though that any number multiplied by 10 is just the number with a 0 on the end of it. The class caught on pretty quickly; the student I was working with did not. No matter how many different ways I explained it she just did not get it. I would say things like "If 3 x 10 is 30, then 5 x 10 is?" and she would immediately respond with, "I don't know, I'm bad at math". After pushing and pushing and pushing (for about an hour) she finally got it. Although the other kids had caught on real fast, Mr. Von had her show the class how to solve 12 x 10. She couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the day. I have never, in the three weeks I have been there, seen her so happy. She came up to me later and said "Thank you for teaching me that today Miss Morris". It's moments like these that I remember why I want to be a teacher.

The troubled waters have calmed

Today went much smoother than yesterday. The kids were still bouncing of the walls, but not as much so that's good. And Emerson, my little eraser friend from yesterday, was much better. I told him at the beginning of the day that if he was on task and good for me then I would give him his eraser back later. It was great, everytime I looked at him he would straighten up and do his work. It's amazing what a little bribing will do. I don't care what all my BYU teachers said, rewards work. And there was one point where Jonathan got up to present his math strategy to the class and Mr. Von told him to call on somebody else to finish the problem. A lot of kids were shouting out at him (the usual with this class) so he said "I'm looking for someone who is quiet and has their hand raised" We both got a kick out of that because Laura and I are throwing that line out all flippin day long to try to get the kids to raise their hands and not shout out. So that's my bit for the day. I need to go study for a little thing called the Praxis...it's a test I have to take to teach, you know, no big deal.

Lesson gone wild

My first observation was today. I kind of don't know what to say about it. I got a good score, but I felt like the lesson was a disaster. These kids were bouncing off the walls. They were consistently disrespectful, off task, wandering around the room and talking while other students or the teacher is talking. They don't listen to me and it is very frustrating. I wish I could just teach and not have to manage and babysit the kids. When we were conferencing with our facilitator about it afterwards and he said that we had a good lesson and we got high scores but our management was low. He blamed a lot of it on the teacher for not setting up good enough routines. During the lesson I had to take an eraser away from a boy today because I had asked him repeatedly to stop playing with it. Later he came up to me and said "No offense teacher, but I don't like you". Then he gave me a cheesy grin and walked away. I kind of wanted to say "ok good, because I don't like you either :)"

Turns out I still love teaching. It was just a stressful day and I wanted too much for it to be perfect. It's funny because I think that the lesson will be easy to teach but then when I go to teach it, it turns out it's a lot harder than I think. It's kind of sad that people think teaching is easy, I would have to strongly disagree with that.

Goblin in the Closet

It all started halloween. The leaves fell lightly on the ground as the cool fall air stung my cheeks...just kidding, I'm not that cheesy. But it really did start halloween. I got to work late and Kyle pointed out that there was a cockroach on my desk. Turns out it was just a big fat fake cockroach but it was gross nevertheless. He actually hadn't left it on my desk but I decided to give it back to him anyway. Well that was a mistake because when I got home that evening I found the little critter in my backpack. I decided to get him back by leaving it on his pillow in his bedroom right before I headed on a plane for Oregon. I didn't realize at this point what I was getting myself into. When I arrived in Medford I had a voicemail from him that stated he had found the cockroach on his pillow and that I would have a surprise waiting for me when I got back.

I got back Sunday night and Bridget was on her cell phone and followed me into the bedroom. As I began to unpack I opened up my closet door to find this sick skull looking thing hanging in my closet. Needless to say I screamed really loud and stumbled backwards. I was mortified as anyone would be to find a skull hanigng in thier closet! It taught me not to pull pranks on guys who have scary looking things lying around thier house. Bridget was cracking up pretty hard at me. What was even funnier, is that later when I came back in the room I screamed again because I had forgotten it was there and gosh darn it, everytime I see that thing my natural reaction is to scream! As if that wasn't enough, when I went to make my lunch this morning the little cockroach critter was there to greet me on my peanut butter---thanks Kyle. I didn't scream ( luckily since only I am up at the crack of dawn), but it certainly made me gasp and got my heart pumping. So here are the pictures of this lovely creature for all of you to enjoy!