Almost half-way done

An academic semester at my university is 16 weeks long, if you include finals week; we also get a week off for Thanksgiving, which means for the classes I teach on campus we have fourteen weeks of class this semester. This is the seventh week of the semester, which means as of this Thursday my classes on campus will be half-way done. I am giving a midterm exam on Thursday in my assessment course. Most of my student teachers are staying in the same classroom for the entire semester, but those who split the semester between two classes, next week will be their last week in their first placement. The last two weeks of each placement I need to conduct a three-way conference with each of my ten student teachers. I had my first two conferences today. The conferences need to be held during one of their planning periods (ex. when their students are in art, gym, etc.). A few of my student teachers this semester have their planning period first thing in the morning. This is problematic for me because I also teach from 8:00-10:45 Tuesday/Thursday. Thus

far this semester I have been able to schedule all my student teaching visits for either Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday, but this week and next week I will also be heading out on Wednesdays. I couldn't schedule any this Friday because we are taking the kids on a field trip to Ephrata and then from there heading down to MD to see the Towfighis one more time before they head back to Turkey plus visit Mount Vernon next Monday as in the very near future we'll be studying George Washington in social studies. I was unable to schedule any conferences for next Tuesday or Thursday, which means I'll have more office hours than usual next week. This week I'm meeting with student teachers on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and next week I'm meeting with them on Wednesday and Friday. I will be able to do a little bit of homeschooling tomorrow as I expect to get home around 11:00am, but in light of our field trip on Friday, it means Monday was my only day to really homeschool the kids at home this week. I'm glad that's not the norm. Unfortunately the same thing will happen next week, but after that I should be back to teaching my kids on Wednesdays.

Preparing for the three-way conferences involves a significant amount of time on my part. I have to read each of their units (and each one is often 30+ pages long), look at a picture of their bulletin board or learning center, read their self-critiques they've written after watching a video of a lesson they taught, complete an online form for the PA department of education, and complete another form for our university which involves rating them in 21 different areas. I admit part-way through this weekend I was rather overwhelmed, but over the weekend I completed everything for six student teachers. I did one more yesterday, which means I have three left to do. A project was due in my assessment class today. I probably should not have scheduled that to be due at the same time as my "crunch" time for student teaching. If I'm feeling exhausted I'm reminding myself that I get a week off in November for Thanksgiving AND I get five weeks off in between the fall and spring semesters. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!

In terms of my kids' school year, next week (on the 17th) we will hit the 25% mark for the school year (day 45 of 180). Because we didn't go to Virginia for a week in September as originally planned, we are a little bit ahead in some subjects compared to where I thought we'd be at this point. Yesterday the kids had their first music classes at Lycoming College. Oliver is in a general music class (K-2), and Nadia and Ian are in a choir (grades 3-6). The classes are taught by music education majors. In order to go to Ephrata Cloister on Friday and Mount Vernon on Monday, they will be missing one art class, one gym class, and one music class. Paul took the kids to a Young Person's Concert put on by the orchestra at my university today. This means we're 3/3 so far with field trips this month.