In five years I will be in collage

Yep, you heard it hear first. A new surge in art students arises as Kids are choosing to skip the dull old routine of attending college and going straight on into collage. When asked to comment, eighth graders stared blankly and said, "What?" Ahh, my wonderful eighth graders. Maybe they can't spell, maybe they can't write well in cursive, and maybe they can't tell left from right, but by God they will learn in my English class. At least that's my hope.

Right now I'm teaching just one of five classes of eighth grade English, taking on the 21 students of 3rd hour. And I've gotta tell you--I like them :) They're a good bunch of kids overall. Even though I can decipher the students I would have been friends with from the kids that would have made my life difficult, I see them all as "my class." Eventually I'll be teaching all five classes, taking on more and more responsibility as the weeks pass. For now though, I'm happy having the small load right from the start, getting accostomed to names and faces and the daily procedures that go on in the middle school. My class just rocks. There's one girl that has seen Pirates of the Caribbean more than I have; one boy that likes DBZ; and one kid that had a good laugh when on the first day of taking attendance I didn't know if the name was "Alexander" or "Alexandra" because the last part of the name was cut off in the copy...I had to ask and it turned out to be an Alexander, and he took it all quite well. Only one week, four days of classes and already I have stories to tell and am learning through trial and error. Sometimes it's easier than others, for instance, today I had a hard time keeping them quiet while they worked on prewriting in class. Some of the students not only wanted to keep on talking to each other; they wanted to talk to me too. Those little buggers :) You know how talkative I am, so it's all I can do to keep myself in check too! Ah well, I'm still learning too, so it's not like I'm going to have it all down now. Gotta learn something in the next two months of student teaching, right?

Tomorrow (well, later today since it IS after 1am) Jenny is supposed to be visiting, so that will rock da house. We're totally hitting Water St. for a couple drinks and a lot of dancing :) You know, tonight I actually ran into an aquaintance from APO that I hadn't seen for a year or so who is still going to school hear. She was at Target with her boyfriend and two of his roomies. They were buying Simpsons Jeopardy, and they actually invited me to go back to their house and play. Maybe if it were Star Wars Jeopardy I'd be tempted, but as it is, I almost never watch "The Simpsons" and would be horrible at the game. Not to mention, I'm not really good friends with her and I just met the rest of the guys, so it just didn't seem like a kosher idea. Besides, I'm a good girl, you know ;) Well, okay, I'm trying to be. Come on, you've got to admit that I'm doing better than last year. And with everything that's going on this year, I have a lot more incentive to be on my best behavior. So, I'm going to try to keep walking in the right direction. Maybe I can even start running. Or perhaps driving? :) For now, a good relaxing weekend and a full night's sleep. Sleep tight with amusing dreams!