Semester Three Practicum: Week 1 Day 1

I arrived bright and early at FFCA. After handing in my police check to the office, the secretary called my partner teacher to come pick me up. This was something new to me, since for the last two practicums, we were told to wait in a conference room to be debriefed by the school liaison or principal before we started our practicum. It was pretty much to the get go in this one! I didn't mind though since my partner teacher filled me in about everything I probably needed to know for the next month.

Very soon after, my partner learning teacher arrived. In this semester, most of us (I'm assuming most) were working in pairs to team teach. I'm very fortunate since my partner learning teacher (or whatever the handbook calls your partner student teacher) is quite intelligent and gifted in engaging classes from what I could tell when we had specialization together. 

After she arrived, we had a little tour around the school, since I wasn't able to meet up with my partner teacher during the school year. For an old junior high school, I thought it was pretty big! It was definitely  much bigger than my junior high school. Once the tour was over, my partner teacher printed us notes for the three classes that he (and eventually we will be) was teaching. As a little challenge for ourselves, we went to see if we could locate the copier/work room. We had no trouble finding the room, but the documents weren't received by the printer! The school was having a network issue apparently today. =/

After we got our notes, it was time for class. The first class was Biol 30. The classroom layout had desks arranged in groups of 4 (some 5). Since some groups had vacant spots, we each took a group and sat down with the students. I had to say that it was definitely different than when I sat with my 8C group back in my old practicum. The reason being was that most of them male students were at the same height or taller than me (and I'm about 5'7-5'8ish). We went over a quiz and discussed a bit about mitosis and meiosis. Once that topic was covered, we started chromosomal diseases like Down Syndrome. 

After Biol 30 was lunch. The staff room was pretty sparse, but it made the space more efficient in my opinion. Lunch was about 40 minutes in length but I swear it only seemed like we had 15 minutes to eat!

After lunch was the first Chemistry 20 class. They went over acids and bases, which I had to admit, I had troubles keeping up. I forgotten quite a bit of the material and only remembered once my partner teacher went over the concept. I guess I will need to step up my game and get reviewing on the material! There was another Chem 20 class after the one we observed. The dynamics between the two classes are different in my opinion. It'll be something that I'll investigate further throughout this week!

After class, we had bus supervision, which was pretty fast and straightforward. I think there were 18 busses waiting to pick up students today? It was the most busses I've seen lined up in a row! After bus supervision, we had a quick debrief with our partner teacher. Our first teaching assignment will be on Wednesday where we will go over calculating pH and pOH! I better pull out my MCAT books and restudy the topic! 

And now I'm pooped. I'm always tired after practicum, =P

Long, but very enjoyable days!

A picture of a hand warmer that I had in my jacket. My mom bought me new ones since the old packets I have expire soon. I'm not sure if I mentioned it on my blog before, but I got frostbite about 4 years ago that was severe enough to have caused me to get my toes amputated =(. Luckily, my skin recovered, but since then, I've been suffering from cold feet (literally) when ever the temperature dips below 10 degrees Celsius. I keep hand warmers as a precautionary measure incase I ever get stuck in the cold for extended periods of time.