Back to high school

Sounds scary, doesn't it? All those nightmares about showing up without pants on, being one of the "cool kids", test anxiety, not being able to wait for lunch. It's all a distant memory. Until this week, when I re-entered the high school scene. As a teacher.

Freaky but cool. I ate in the staff room today at a big round table with other teachers eating their very teacher-like lunches: apples, bananas, home-made sandwiches in plastic containers. Ah! And me with my sandwich and snapple bought from Serious Coffee down the street. But, I think I fit in anyways. I was worried that teachers might mistake me for a student at the school (although technically I'm not a teacher until I finish my practicum May 4th) but I actually had the opposite experience. A grade eleven girl asked me if I was a prof at Uvic. I was so shocked. Do I look old enough to be a prof? I didn't think so. At least they didn't think I was 17. That would have been worse. Much worse.

So, I've been blessed with two lovely ladies as sponsor teachers. One is a bit more "out there" so people in the school keep telling me, but I just love her. She's so funny and quirky and the kids love her because of it. Then, there is my French sponsor teacher, who is super nice and helpful. They've both allowed me to participate in their classrooms, although this is supposed to be just an observation period. But, as I soon discovered, watching a classroom for two weeks would be very boring. So, I've already been marking tests for the French class, and helping students. They seem very eager to ask for help, which is great. And for the most part I've been able to answer their questions. I'm trying to plan an activity for next week for my French ten's. It has to do with nationalities and adjectives. I'm trying to think of well-known world figures that grade ten's would recognize to play a little game, where they have to name the person's nationality in French. Any ideas?

I've also realized how tiring high school is. The school had a talent night for writers to read their work, and I really wanted to go and check it out, but I didn't know about it until today, and I was so tired by the time I got home at 4:30 and made dinner and relaxed that I didn't think I could go back again. Plus, I wasn't sure if any teachers were going to it, so I didn't want to go by myself. I'm sure there will be something like it in the future though. When I finally am a teacher, I'm so signing up to be part of the travel club. My teacher is the global ed teacher, and she gets to take the students on a trip to France and Italy, and the travel club is going to Greece and Turkey. How great would that be?