I’m a person who struggles with transitions.  It takes me a long time to settle in somewhere and it always seems like it’s time for me to leave once I’m finally feeling comfortable again.  This summer is no exception.  I’ve had a whirlwind visit back in the States, trying to see as many people as I can.  I’ve been to Vermont, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Williamstown and of course, I’ve been at home in Wellesley.  Along the way I’ve seen many friends who I haven’t seen since graduation (!) and I’ve been able to spend some much needed time outside a city environment as well.  It’s impossible for me to choose a favorite part of the summer, or a favorite visit because each one was wonderful in it’s own way.  I’m currently in New York staying with Claire.  Rachel and I met Claire in Williamstown and then drove to the trailhead to hike up the Hopper Trail to the top of Greylock.  The rains came and we never actually made it to the summit, but we did hitch a ride back to Sperry Road and found our way to Stoney Ledge.  After many failed attempts to start a fire, I finally gave up and we spent the night reminising in our sleeping bags.  We had a nice visit from a field mouse in the middle of the night and I don’t think any of us slept very well.  But we had so much fun!  I was so happy to be in WOOLF territory and back in the Berkshires.  We hiked back down in the morning and stopped by all our local haunts — TC, Pappa Charlie’s and the Ephporium — and I was able to see a few professors while I was there. Spring Street has changed, but even with the changes I still felt like 15 Spring Street was my home and I had to stop myself from heading upstairs.  It was strange, knowing that it’s been almost two years since I moved in for senior year but feeling like I had just moved in and was ready to start my last year all over again.  Maybe if there were students there I would have felt differently, but even though I was so happy to be there I was also incredibly sad because I knew that it wasn’t really my home anymore.  Williams was my home, my family, and my support system and I feel so at peace being there.  Of course there were times where it was miserable and I can’t count the number of hours I spent in the library, but every place reminded me of a friend, or an Ephoria concert, or a party, or a great long run I did somewhere in the hills.  It’s made me think a lot about where I want to be after this year in London.  I’m torn between the part of me that wants to be traveling the world, seeing new people and places and the other part of me that yearns for something comfortable and familiar.  I guess time will tell.

I’m apprehensive about returning to London.  When I decided to stay in the spring I didn’t feel ready to leave.  But having been back in the States for the summer, I don’t feel ready to leave the States.  I know that I’ll be happy once I get there, and I’m hoping this year will be more fun than last year was now that I know the city and the school.  But I can’t help but feel reluctant to get on the plane and leave again.  I’m caught between two places and two lives, and it’s difficult.  I guess this is all part of becoming a grown up, but I’m not sure I like it!

A big thank you to everyone who hosted me this summer and made it special… you always have a place to stay in London!

Having already used trains, and planes, Andrew and I embarked on an adventure taking a bus from Barcelona to Madrid, stopping for a night in Zaragoza to visit some of Andrew’s friends.  I’m not a big fan of busses in general – they tend to make me nauseous and irritable – but I figured we’d rough it and be just fine.  We had to wait 3 hours because the bus we planned on taking was sold out.  But once we got on it, things went smoothly.  We joined Andrew’s friends for tapas and then walked around Zaragoza the next morning, and saw pretty much all there is to see in such a small city.  Once we reached Madrid, I finally felt comfortable.  Having visited my friend Sarah there this spring, I knew my way around and knew the sites.  And I also knew that I had seen the Reina Sofia and the Prado and that Andrew was going to see them with his group, which took the pressure off …we were pretty museumed out at that point.  We spend our days wandering the streets and seeing all the different plazas, and even took a boatride in the pond in Parque de Retiro.  It was also gay pride week while we were there, so we took in the crazy dancing and partying going on in the streets! Everyone was having a blast until…someone dumped a bucket of water from his balcony down to the street where I was unknowingly conveniently waiting to be majorly soaked. Great times, great tapas, and a great way to end our trip of brother and sisterly bonding.

I finished school on the 18^th of June and was lucky enough to have Andrew come stay and travel with me before his program started.   We had such a fantastic time together!

Our first stop was just staying put and exploring London.  It wasn’t as relaxing as “staying home” sounds – during those few days I moved into a new flat, took the GREs and packed for the States.  But we did manage to do some fun things too!  One of the highlights of our few days in London included seeing Cymbals Eat Guitars on Andrew’s birthday (hard to believe he’s 17 and on the road now…lookout MA drivers).  He even got a shoutout from Matt! Very cool.  We also went to see Blood Brothers in the West End, a great musical that I didn’t know much about but really enjoyed.  We saw just about every market there is in London…Borough, Spitalfields and Camden Market.

From London we took the Eurostar to Paris where we stayed with our Uncle David.  Getting there is very easy, just a two hour train ride, provided that you get to the train station on time, which was challenging for us.  I had to go to school and drop off my laptop and keys on the way and Andrew and I agreed to meet at the St. John’s Wood tube station so he didn’t have to trek to school with his bags.  I thought we were meeting on the platform, but I guess he thought we were meeting outside the station.  I guess he was hidden amongst the throngs of Abbey Road visitors, because I didn’t see him on my way in.  I waited for ages on the platform, and even got some questions from concerned Tube staff members who were worried about my lurking.  I figured that we must have crossed wires and that he was probably waiting on the platform at the tube stop near my flat, so I took the tube back there.  No luck.  Well, maybe he went to take out the trash or something and couldn’t get back into the apartment?  So I ran (all of this with my bags) back to my flat where I thought I would surely find him.  Again, no luck!  By this point I was sweaty, frustrated and starting to get really concerned.  I had made it very clear to STAY ON THE PLATFORM if I got stuck at school and was a bit late. Finally I got a phone call from a payphone from Andrew wondering where I was. He was OUTSIDE the tube station reading the paper…ahh!  I got back on the tube, racking up an insane number of charges on my Oyster card for just 1 hour and about 1 mile of traveling back and forth, and finally found him.  We raced to King’s Cross and made it in time, thanks to the ridiculous amount of time I allotted to getting there and through security.  Phew!  First leg of the trip and I’m already drenched.  Luckily we learned not to split up again and the rest of the trip went smoothly.

We had a fantastic time in Paris.  We went to the Pompidou, Notre Dame, and the Louvre.  We ate falafel and walked around the Marais district.  We rented the Velib bikes and took them under the Eiffel Tower.  We also took a train (and a replacement bus) out to Chartes for a daytrip.  Andrew was a bit reluctant to go, wondering why we had to travel two hours to see another cathedral when Paris was full of them.  But it was well worth the trek and one of the highlights of the trip, for me at least.  Having studied Chartres in Art History 102, seeing it in real life made me realize, once again, that slides don’t do justice to works of art or architecture.

Here are a few pictures.  Visit my facebook page or click this link to see more! (The facebook page has captions)

Click to view slideshow.

I came to first grade with strong babysitting instincts.  I knew how to make kids laugh, how to read a story aloud with good expression, and how to nurse a scraped knee.  But I didn’t know how to handle nineteen different students with different strengths and needs.  During the first few weeks at school I felt overwhelmed and feared I might be in way over my head.  I wondered if teaching Grade 1 was something that I could actually handle as well as I imagined I could. I felt slightly panicked the first time that Jo went for lunch and left me with the class alone for…thirty whole minutes.  I felt even more panicked when she said, “Why don’t you teach the first Fundations lesson?” since my grasp on the program and what it should look like was shaky at best.  But the learning curve in teaching is a steep one.  I expected to come out of this year with a good idea of whether or not I wanted to pursue teaching.  I didn’t expect to come out of the year feeling so confident in my own teaching abilities.  If the school were to lose a first grade teacher at the last minute and ask me to cover for them (with some strong guidance) I would do so with excitement and nervousness rather than trepidation, showing a level of confidence I didn’t expect to gain this year.

I owe a great deal of this confidence to Jo, my mentor teacher, whose reassurance and feedback throughout the year has helped me to believe in my own abilities. Her “you’ll learn by doing” approach to the intern program forced me to jump in head first, and she had me teaching from day one, even when I wasn’t sure that I could.  A key to our success has been open communication. Jo’s feedback on individual lessons or weeks of full control teaching has been invaluable, whether it was in the form of a written comment or just a brief, “how’d that lesson feel?” chat.  Had I been forced to solely observe Jo for the first three months, I think my experience this year would have been a very different one.  I think that I would have attempted to copy the routines and teaching patterns that Jo had established, rather than take the parts that work for me and figure out the rest on my own.  I imagine that I would have been very bored as well and would not have felt much ownership in the curriculum or projects that the students were doing.  But Jo made it very clear from the start that we were partners and that she couldn’t do her job without me. I took a guided reading group right from the first day of Reader’s Workshop and Jo and I alternated teaching Writer’s Workshop and Math throughout the year. While I don’t have another teaching experience to reference this one against, I would say without hesitation that Jo has been an excellent mentor for me this year and that our personalities meshed in a way that afforded us an open, honest and conflict-free relationship.

Classroom management was one of the biggest challenges for me this year.  In my daily life with adults or peers I find it difficult to be very assertive when I think I might hurt someone’s feelings.  Usually if I say, “I’d rather that you didn’t do XYZ” or, “would you please…” most adults will read between the lines and understand what I am implying.  But I learned quickly that a firm “yes” or “no” is extremely important in establishing classroom expectations. I had to, in a sense, retrain myself when talking to students and managing their behavior. When Jo and I were working side-by-side it was easy for me to let her take the reigns as the disciplinarian, and it wasn’t until I took full control of the classroom for the first time in November that I was forced to really consolidate those skills. When I was in full control of the classroom for several weeks this spring, teaching on my own and organizing our entire day, those management tasks were left up to me, and I was able to set up very clear boundaries and expectations which the students respected.  I wasn’t sure how they would react to the shift in control and was afraid they might try to act differently when they saw me leading the day instead of Jo, but I’m not sure that they even noticed the difference. The students’ reaction showed me just how far my classroom management skills had come.

Another skill that I focused on this year was developing my “teaching language.”  After reading an article from The Responsive Classroom on effective questioning techniques, I worked hard not to repeat the students’ answers and focused on asking, “Who has a question I can answer?” rather than, “Does anyone have a question?”.  This was counterintuitive, but Jo helped keep me on track and reminded me when I slipped.  I also explored different techniques to try to keep our students engaged for longer periods of time, using “turn to your partner,” “think, pair, share” or “no raising hands, I’m just going to call on someone” strategies to mix things up and keep everyone involved instead of just those few who always participate.  Another small but difficult challenge for me was remembering to allow enough wait time after my questions before calling on someone.

Early one dark Thursday morning in November I received the following text message from Jo: “I’m out sick.  Called the office.  You’re head teacher.  Go for it.”  Jo and I had been planning to have me take over that following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday while she was at the Literacy for All conference, and I had been mentally preparing and physically planning for those few days with Jo. But that sudden sick day threw me for a loop.  I was unprepared which, for a thorough planner like me, was distressing. I jumped out of bed and got dressed as quickly as I could in an effort to maximize my prep time at school before the kids arrived so I could figure out just what I was going to teach them all day! To make a long story short, the day came and went with few hiccups, as did the next four school days while Jo was out. On the following Saturday I wrote in my journal, “What I week. I know I have said this before, but this time I actually mean it.  This was the busiest, most exhausting week so far.  Jo was away at a literacy conference in Providence on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday leaving me as the head honcho. The prep work was very time consuming and not everything went as smoothly as I would have liked, but we all survived!  It’s a good feeling to know that I can handle the whole class if I need to.”

The way I felt about taking over the class that November morning and the way I feel about taking over the classroom now are worlds apart.  I am most proud of the four weeks that I spent with full control of the classroom.  Taking a whole unit from start to finish was incredibly satisfying.  Being not just involved, but in charge of every step of the way, the planning, the teaching, the assessment, made me feel much more invested in the work that the students were doing and the work that I was doing outside of class to prepare for it.  The timing worked out well and I was able to take over right after spring break, which was at the start of our Oceanography and non-fiction writing units.  I chose an interdisciplinary approach, changing our typical Reader’s Workshop model to include non-fiction books for guided reading and more mini-lessons on topics such as finding the important parts of text and note taking, which the students practiced using books about their own sea animal.  Our science lessons focused on a different aspect of sea life (habitat, food, predators/prey) which the students would study in general as a whole class and then specifically during Writer’s Workshop as they researched, took notes, and wrote about how it applied to their own creature.  The structure of these units worked well together, allowing the students to have enough time to finish their all-about books without a panic at the end.  I was pleased to see how quickly they got into the reading, note-taking and writing routine; after a few days most of the students were working independently. It was extremely rewarding to see how engaged the kids were during their research, especially those students for whom behavior and focus was typically a struggle at other times.  Equally rewarding was watching how proud they were when they presented their all-about books to their parents at our Literacy morning.  While I welcomed the break from planning when my weeks of full-control were finally over, I felt an unexpected twinge of sadness to be losing that sense of complete ownership over what was going on in the classroom.

It’s impossible for me to sum up an entire year in just a few pages, especially a year as full of new experiences as this one.  Hopefully this gives some insight into my experience as an intern with Jo this year.  Like anything else it has had it’s highs and lows, but the positive moments and memories I have from the year far outweigh the negative.  I’m not sure how many of my friends can say that they are guaranteed to smile, laugh and get at least one hug at their job everyday.  I’ve realized that being able to say that is worth a lot.

The end of the school year ended in a blur.  It was a whirlwind of end of the year concerts, meetings, assemblies and more meetings and assemblies.  The last day was full of tearful goodbyes and a huge mix of emotions to be ending my first year as a teacher.  I was more ready for summer vacation than I’ve ever been, but sad to say goodbye to my students, especially those who are moving back to the US.

I just realized that you may not all be aware of my big change in plans.  I’m actually going to be staying in London next year. It was incredibly difficult decision and a lot of different factors went into it, but I’m excited.  I’m hoping this second year will give me some more time to think through my next steps and observe teachers in other areas of the school and that I’ll be able to really enjoy London now that I’m already settled.  It took so long to get used to being a member of the working world, the school I was working at, and London.  With those things in place I hope this year will have fewer headaches and more fun! I am moving down to Kindergarten, which will give me the opportunity to work with a different teacher, different age group and an entirely different curriculum. K2 at our school follows the PYP, or Primary Years Program, centered on project work.  This means that the kids choose a topic or subject that they’re interested in, for example, transportation, and we structure their curriculum around it. We would read books and write about transportation, arrange visits to the tube station to see the behind the scenes work and go to the transport museum.  Our art component might be to build a model double decker or something like that.  It’s a curriculum first brought forward by a woman named Lilian Katz and some schools use it all the way through elementary school.  It’s very different from what I taught this year in first grade and from a career development standpoint, it will be great to have an experience with project work.

Come back soon to read about my Eurotrip with Andrew and summer vacation back in the States!

On another note, I’m starting my GRE class tonight, which meets on Monday and Wednesdays from 6 30 pm – 9 30 pm.  YIKES!!! It’s so past my bedtime I have no idea how I’m going to manage with this and everything else. Luckily I’m in my fourth, and last, week of full control of the classroom which means that I’ve been doing all of the planning, prep work, and teaching while Jo sits back and looks pretty (just kidding she does work too!) It’s been exhausting and super time consuming, but I’m loving being able to plan everything myself. More on that later.

Other news is that I went to visit my friend Sarah Dewey in Madrid for my three day weekend.  Photos and an update on my trip coming soon!

When Jenny and I were waiting in the security line at Heathrow I spied with my little eye a woman coming through wearing big black sunglasses.  Inside.  In cloudy London.  “Strange” I thought.  “It must be someone famous!” I looked closer and then I realized, “Kate WINSLET!!!!”  My first celebrity siting in London.  I know she’s just a person, but she’s also a famous person, and I was so excited to see her!  Honestly, the sunglasses were a dead giveaway.  She should have just gone without them and would have had an easier time going incognito.

I’m back from Egypt and I think Jenny and I brought ehs un back with us because it’s a glorious sunny day in London and has been since I’ve been back.  It’s very hard to motivate myself to plan for school, but it must be done.  Too bad I can’t be on vacation forever.  But instead o doing my school work I’m going to procrastinate a bit and write a post about my amazing trip to Egypt. We were gone for 9 days and did and saw SO much.  I’m absolutely exhausted after all the early wake ups, overnight trains, and blazing heat.  It’s almost like I need a vacation to recover from my vacation!  But honestly I feel so fortunate to have traveled and seen everything that I did.  To give you a play by play of each day from sunrise to midnight would take hours and pages, so i think I’ll just give a general overview of what the trip was like and a few specific stories and highlights.

We traveled with On the Go tours and there were about 30 people on our trip.  Jenny and I were the only Americans — everyone else was from South Africa, Australia, England or New Zeland.  I think I was the youngest person on the trip but the majority of the travelers were in their late 20s I’d say.  We basically spent all of our time together.  We traveled from temple to temple on a big coach bus where we got colorful explanations and updates from our tourguide, Sheriff.  His catchphrase was, “Ladies and Gentlemen, get ready, get excited! This is the time you have been waiting for all of your lives! We’re visiting XXX” and so on and so forth.  Sheriff was hysterical — full of stories and quirks.  He did his best to keep us engaged and entertained all the time. even if it meant acting out scenes carved on temple walls or repeating 3/4 of everything he said.

We spent 3 nights in hotels and the other nights on overnight trains (Jenny and I did not pay the upgrade from seater to sleeper train, which I would reconsider next time).  We also spent two nights aboard a felucca sailing boat going down the Nile.  About half the group went on a cruise ship and the other half was split into two groups and put on different sailboats.

I’d break down my trip into 3 top moments.

1) Visiting the Pyramids on the first day.

2) Sailing along the Nile on our Felucca sailboat and our nighttime bonfire along the banks.

3) Visiting the Egyptian museum in Cairo on our last day.

One of the most magical moments was seeing the pyramids at night on our way from the airport to our hotel outside Cairo on the first night.  For some reason I expected them to be in a remote area but they are surprisingly close to the airport and you can see them from the highway!

Visiting the pyramids the next morning was awe-inspiring.  It’s absolutely amazing to see something so 1) old and 2) huge.  It’s something that everyone says and thinks, but you really can’t grasp just what an extraordinary feat it was until you’re standing right in front of the pyramids  They are absolutely enormous and built from large large blocks of stone.  I thought that the facade was going to be very smooth but the stones are actually quite roughly cut, although uniform in size.  Jenny and I had a great time taking pictures in front of the first pyramid, trying many many times to get the jump shot timed correctly.  After walking around the first pyramid by ourselves we got back on the bus and drove to a panoramic viewpoint where we could see all three pyramids.  We also tried some funny optical illusion shots there, hoping to touch the top of both pyramids with our fingers, make up the sides with our arms or look like we were holding up on of them up with our palms.  It was definitely more difficult than it looked and took a lot of patience and detailed instruction (move your left arm to the right one inch, now don a bit.  wait no that’s wrong.  Try again.  Fkatten out your hand,” etc.

It seems that I’ve become much more claustrophobic as I get older.  We had the opportunity to go INSIDE on of the temples.  We crawled through a 1.5 meter high tunnel to the direct center.  We were litearlly standing in THE MIDDLE OF THE PYRAMIDS IN EGYPT>  What an incredible experience, however terrifying.

Throughout the whole trip I had a really hard time wrapping my head around what 3,500 years ago means.  I know that everything I;ve seen in Egypt is very very old, but understanding just what that means or how long ago it was is quite difficult for me.  I’m also really eager to buy a book and learn more about everything I’ve seen, since Sheriff’s explanations weren’t always the easiest to follow (although he did teach us some sweet belly dancing moves such as, “The Snake,” “Attraction,” and “Seduction.”)

Out trip down the Nile was wonderful, sailing from Aswan to Luxor. I forgot how much I love being on the water, and also how much happier I am in sunshine.  it’s just hard to be in a bad mood when the weather is nice! A felucca is a traditional wooden sail boat that has two sails.  But it’s quite flat and best described as a barge with sails.  It’s got a small small deck area in the back and then just a 7X12 foot platform that’s covered in a cushion where the passengers sit (ours was a very nice 80s floral).  There were 10 people (minus the three captains) on our boat, which was distinguishable from the others only by its myriad Bob Marley flags.  Our captina was named Fuzzy Wuzzy and he seriously rocked his dreadlocks  Wehonestly didn’t do much for those two days on the boat.  Luckily it was covered with another sheet about 4 feet above our heads, which protected us from the sun.  It was definitely HOT.  But so nice to relax and read, or stick my feet off the side of the boat into the cool water.  I didn’t sleep all that well, or all that much, since the sun woke me up very early more by its ferocious heat rather than the bright light.  But we got to stop and go swimming, drink some local beer and just listen to music (on a very ghetto tape player).  It was so peaceful.

On our second night we stopped on the banks of the Nile and had an evening bonfire.  Alas, there were no s’mores, which was very sad.  I’ll have to make up for it this summer.  But we built a huge fire and the captains all got out their drums and tambourines and we danced around the fire to the Noubian music.  It was one of those moments when all other worries go flying out the window and you just enjoy the omment you’re in.  So perfect and bissful.

An early start on the second to last day allowed us to avoid some of the fierce midday heat as we ventured to the tomb strewn Valley of the Kings.  There was an optional hot air excursion over Thebes, but it was a bit pricey for my budget so I’ll have to go next time! Highlights of the day included the Colossi of Memnon, a massive pair of statues that stand silent against the backdrop of history, the Valleys of the Kings and the awesome ramped and colonnaded Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, fondly nicknamed “Queen Hot Chicken Soup” by Sheriff.

The Valley of the Kings is studded with often highly decorated tombs, constructed to once house the regal sarcophagi enclosed mummies of the mighty pharaohs awaiting passage into the after-life. In the afternoon we visited the colossal Temple of Karnak, with a stone-columned Hypostle Hall. It was all, as everything else on the trip was, amazing.  But the heat was really really brutal in Luxor.  Even though we woke up early it was miserably hot by 9 am.  So imagine our exhaustion by the time the end of the visits rolled around.  Luckily we got to enjoy a good peaceful night’s sleep on the….train back to Cairo!  I’m getting tired just thinking about it again!  It was a whirlwind to say the least.

We woke up very early again when our train arrived at the station in Cairo and spent the last day at the Egyptian Museum, which was another one of my favorite parts of the trip.  Famed for the treasures of King Tutankhamen and his famous solid gold funerary mask., the Egyptian museum is unlike any other I’ve ever been to.  It houses so many extraordinary pieces of art and historically valuable artifacts, but they’re all just clumped together and are unprotected.  There is very litlte wall text, and some of it is written by hand on pieces of lined notebook paper! Craziness! Very different from all the museums in Europe and in the States. But I’ve now seen the first wall painting EVER< King Tut’s treasures, which are so flashy that I was almost blinded by the sheer amount of gold everywhere.  The mask and solid gold coffins inlayed with stone were my favorites by far.  You’re not permitted to take photos inside the museum though, so you’ll have to go visit for yourself.

Well, that’s all about I have time and energy for.  I hopeyou’ve enjoyed reading about my trip and that I’ve been able to describe what I saw well enough to give you a good picture of what the trip was like .  I’m back in London after a 1 am flight from Cairo and through Paris (I confused 13:10 and 1:10 and didn’t realize until the day of my flgith!).  It seems that spring has hit us over here and I really hope it stays this way.  I’m missing those spring days in the Berkshires right now where it flinally gets nice enough to run outside in a t shirt and shorts, and also our BBQs and evenings on the roof of my Goff’s apartment. Hopefully London will provide an equally fun and memorable springtime as Williams did last year.  I miss you all!