More information!! :)

I've been playing a little phone tag with my mentor teacher and today we finally got ahold of one another! I was so excited to finally get to talk to him and to learn more about where I'll be in a semester! This is what I found out:

• I will be teaching 8th grade students pre-algebra and algebra, which are some of my favorite math topics!!
• Each student will have their very own laptop for use at home and in the classroom, which will make some very exciting lesson plans! Computers are so much fun and math is very applicable to them!
  
• Each class is only 45 minutes, so a little short, but I'll just have to learn to manage my time superbly!
• I get to plan a lesson on one of three topics: exponents, functions and graphing (which will be excellent with the computers!) and/or geometry (for PAWS testing, which is the WY standardized tests)!

Some other things that I thought were neat was that my mentor is sending me the classes textbooks through an email because they can be found online so I can plan my lessons while using the actual book! (I have to plan two units for my methods 2 course this semester, one which I will use next semester in my student teaching). My mentor sounded very excited to have a student teacher, he said he's had some in the past but he hasn't had any for awhile. When I talked to my methods professor, she said that they had not sent a math student teacher to the school I am going to, since she has been at UW (for around 10 years). But the school has had other student teachers over the years, just not math. I could hardly contain my excitement for the rest of the afternoon after the phone call. I find it so exciting to learn all these details!

The Beginning...

So, I decided I would try this "blogging" thing out. I enjoy keeping up with my family through theirs so I thought it would only be fair if they could do the same for me. Although, I don't think my life is quite as exciting...I just work and go to school! But next semester I am moving to Casper to do my student teaching, so that should be a bit more exciting!!! I'm really excited about the move, but it is still a few months away. I don't even know many details about what I will be doing next semester yet. I know that I will be teaching at a Jr. High and I will be living with an old friend from high school! (What a blessing it is to not have to find housing! I hear it's been incredibly difficult in Casper, so lucky me!) I suppose that is about all that is going on in my life right now. I've just been bogged down with quite a bit of homework as of late, and its only been three weeks! Oh well, its my last semester of classes so I should try to enjoy it right?