And So it Begins...

For those of you who have been keeping up with my months long journey to alternative certification, I just wanted to give an update. Yesterday I started what will be a school-year long internship, 24 hours a week (minimum), which at this point looks like three full school days (Mon/Wed/Fri). I'm getting my certification in secondary English, while taking online classes towards a master's degree in education. It's a legit brick and mortar school here in Colorado, but they're kind and allow you to take the classes online so that you can do a post-bacc certification from anywhere in the world. Plus, a lot of post-bacc certification courses have you take random education classes, and it's nice that the education classes I am taking are going towards something instead of just a clap on the back and a check mark for completion.**

Although I don't plan on saying anything bad about the program or the students or the school or any of that, I will still, for obvious reasons, not share the name of the school in which I am interning. The most I will say is that I purposefully chose a Title I school because of my convictions regarding education inequality in America. I would feel like a chump if I cried all over the pages of "Savage Inequalities", kept up with all  the lawsuits against school districts in Texas and Colorado, and then blithely signed up to student teach at some high end fancy school attended by angel babies filled with SAT words, a fierce love for all things learning, and showered in $$$. I have more than one mentor teacher in the English department, which is neat because I get exposure to every grade level in high school, plus every class from AP English to intervention classes. I'm also assisting in the drama department, and this week we have auditions. It's nice to get thrown right into the mix of things. Classes are going well- my first week's assignments all came back A's- and I'm really enjoying the literature they are giving us. I'm also doing my nerd thang and supplementing all of  this with random books on education from the library. Any suggestions for me?

The only womp womp of all of this is my broken foot. Being in the classroom will be a lot better when I'm not clicking around on awkward crutches. Seriously, awkward like whoa. Thoughts on crutches, which I shared on FB, I shall now share here as well:

For a person with excellent balance, good coordination, and a strong upper body, I'm not really sure why I'm such a flailing baby giraffe on my crutches...also, since I've never broken anything/had a cast/had crutches I have to say that my childhood jealousy of those with crutches was totally stupid. Crutches are not like arm pit stilts, contrary to my fantasies of their fun potential as a 9 year old...they're just awkward and hurt my hands.

Unrelated- our tomato plants are going crazy and tonight it's caprese salads for dinner- heirloom tomatoes and basil from our garden, plus balsamic vinegar from the farmers' market. I'm watching Bobby pick tomatoes from the dining room window, and afterwards we're off to the grocery store to see if they have their  local goat cheese mozzarella in stock. If not, I can handle that being the biggest problem of my day.

 **I am not knocking those who took that route, I'm just saying, either way I have to pay for those classes and do the work, so ending up with a degree for taking them makes me a happy cat.