Bloggy Bloggy Recap

This past week has been crazy. Brian Fellows crazy. Not so much with the animals, but with its inordinate amount of activities, at least by my standards. I will attempt to break its content down by using, drum roll, headings!

Standardized Testing—

My first trip to Lubbock for the week saw me taking the second and final state board exam I needed to pass before becoming a teacher. It was administered by a very large lesbian who laughed in the face of the rigid procedures one usually finds at testing centers. The last time I tested at Prometric—the GRE—I was glad to get out of there with out a body cavity exam. The proctor was that intense. This lady was more interested in chatting. She herself was enrolled in online classes and interrupted me about six times to discuss commonalities between my program and hers, during the test! Thankfully, it was a no-brainer, and I passed (my score report arrived via email a few days later)!

Roasting—

My second trip to Lubbock involved my dad’s teary goodbye to a certain farm credit bank that he has served as chairman of the board for the past 15 years. I didn’t think the retirement dinner they were throwing him would be that big of a deal, but there were about 100 people there, and it was more of a full-on roast than a simple dinner. There were seven or eight roasters, some better than the rest, who regaled us with some pretty rich stories about my dad’s behavior throughout his tenure, many of which I’m sure my dad would have liked to have died long ago. There were some other speeches about his accomplishments, which made me tearily proud, and one by my dad, who did his best impression of a politician seeking votes. It always amazes me how suave and dapper he can be. I’m too used to seeing him in his shorts watching television on the couch. After the roasts and the other speeches, he was awarded some hideous glass trophy thing that looked like a People’s Choice Award, along with the donation of a scholarship in his name. Again, proud. The dinner was great, too, but my favorite part of the whole evening was when one of dad’s colleagues, who sat across from us, told us the story about how his mother died by falling into a grain silo and being decapitated by the silo’s moving augers. Not appropriate, but awesome, dinner conversation.

Teaching—

So in the midst of all of this, I began my job as a teacher of the Mennonites. I’ve got 12 students, and in their cultural tradition of giving their children similar names, four of them are named Sarah and four are named Anna. This was confusing, especially during our introductory, get-to-know-you icebreaker. The game asked them to list their name and one thing they liked before going around the room and remembering each person’s answers (terribly clever, I know). Not only did they all have the same name, but the majority listed “spending time with their family” as the thing they liked. Thankfully, there was some differentiation. Some of the Sarah’s liked spending time with their families indoors, while some of the Anna’s preferred spending time with their families outdoors. Overall, it was a good first week, but it was all a little harder than I thought it would be. There is just such a language barrier, and on top of that, the students are all at such different levels of English proficiency that it is challenging to prepare class-wide instruction. I’m going to attempt and simplify things for next week. At least they didn’t run off. Someone actually brought me cookies on Friday!

Endings—

Any free time I had this week was spent finishing final projects for my education classes. I can now thankfully state that I have finished the coursework needed to become a teacher. All I lack now is student teaching this fall, putting me looking for work in the middle of the year. Hurrah. The End.