Chapter 9: Shake and Shiver

With shivering fingers the color of a child's ocean, our hero laboriously types out each little letter, letting language convey each idea. Will he ever be warm? Will the sun come again? Or has the world fallen into eternal winter? Our hero will fight on against the darkness, and bring again the days of sun and Summer.

OK, so it's not that cold. In fact, I haven't even turned on my heater tonight.

Last week was a different story.

So, for those who don't know, Portlanders are really weird when it comes to snow. For most of the US, when they get snow, life goes on. It might be life at a slightly slower speed, but it's still a speed none the less. For Portland, however, everything stops when there's even a hint of...this:

heeee :)

Or this:

heeeee :D

Or, horror of horrors, this:

EEEEEE! :D

I still get excited looking at those pictures. And it was because of the threat of all that snow that school on Thursday was canceled. On Wednesday night.

Which is really unusual.

Normally, when there's a threat of snow, the school's wait until the morning of to make the decision to a) have school as normal, b) have a two hour delay, or c) cancel everything and bunker down like the apocalypse is coming. Imagine my surprise, then, when PPS (Portland Public Schools) canceled the night before. It was a miracle. I could turn off my 6:30 alarm! I could sleep in!

Until 4:30am.

I guess you could say that I was a little excited for the snow.

So, I spent the day either shivering in my room near my heating vent (my room mate likes a cold apartment, while I like a little warmth in my life, so we compromise by me just heating up my personal space), and dancing around outside...while still shivering.

Still, the day came to an end, with the promise of school the next day. I went to bed really early, in order to be ready.

Cue 4:30am again--or something close to it--when I receive a text from my mom. "No school for you today." So, what happened?

Well, it had stayed colder than the weather people had expected the night before, and...we had had a bit of freezing rain.

For those unfamiliar with Freezing Rain, it basically is what happens when normal rain hits a layer of cold just above the ground and freezes on contact. It basically turns everything into a sheet of ice, and encases anything left outside in a cocoon of ice. Regrettably, when I took my I-am-insane-but-when-could-I-do-this-again? walk at 9:00 in the morning, I forgot my phone at home, so no pictures.

Where does this leave me, and what does this have to do with student teaching?

Well, I had roughly planned out three weeks of lessons during Thanksgiving break. Using data that I'd obtained by, you know, observing my students, we were going to focus on writing the middle part of a story using a single character. The goal was to give them ideas, with the first story being the character dealing with a problem, the second focusing on the character having a secret, while the third was going to focus on the character having a desire.

But, at this point, I don't think we're going to have time.

Quite frankly, I do want to deal with the character having a desire, but I don't think we'll have enough time to practice the new vocab if we went the way that I was planning. So, I'm going to have to move some things around for it to work, but I think I'll be able to fit it in. Truly, it just depends on how tomorrow goes. If my student's remember the story, and we get through everything at a good pace, then we'll add in a desire. If not...well, then we'll do the desire after Christmas Break with a new character.

One last note, before I sign off: the system works. The system that I made, that I was talking about, works. The students get it, and all that I have to do to get them back on track is pick up the white board and change the number. If it goes down, they quickly shape up. If it goes up, they relax a little bit and feel fantastic about themselves. The best part of the system is that it lets them self-monitor, because that's what I'm really after. If I spend the entire year constantly harping at them with how exactly I want them to shape up, then they'll always expect this input to come from an external source. However, if I can help them self-monitor--and understand when I think that they could do better without telling them how--then I start getting them to be a bit more introspective about their own behavior. Call it an odd quirk, but I'd rather empower my kids to be able to do things on their own than have them depend on me.

Oh, and speaking of which, I've taken a page out of my CT's book, and assigned a BB (Brain Break) person to my classes. This way, when someone thinks the energy is too high--or too low--they can say BB once a class, and we can do something for about a minute that has nothing to do with Spanish to better help them focus on the task at hand.

This has been another adventure in the Austentatious! If you liked it, tell your friends; if you hated it, tell your enemies; and if you don't care either way, then tell everyone! Good night, stay warm, and stay safe.