Day 1

I will admit, I am doing this a little late. Better late than never though. I also will probably not post on everyday of my internship. (We would all want to kill ourselves if I did.)

Day 1 consisted of getting up at 4:37am because my internship is in Georgia. And I live in Alabama. You can probably see why that sucks. (Hint: 4:37am!!!!!!)

But Forrester made us a kick ass mix cd to listen to on the way there -TSwizzle was invovled, singing along was invovled, Fo singing a slightly different version to make TSwizzle preggers was also involved- and I had coffee and we had lots to talk about so it was good ride.

Then we got there. My teacher has first block planning. So we got to chat and talk about the day. She also handed me a stack of essays. On the first day.

These essays were written by her senior English students. They watched "The Blind Side" and then had to pick a character or characters that they thought wer heroic and explain why. This was supposed to be a five paragraph essay.

I told my teacher immediately that I had not seen the movie. (yeah. It's true. Sorry. I'm over sports movies.) She figured I could probably grade the essays anyway. Wait, WHAT?!?! Grading essays on the first day?!!!

I have no idea how to grade essays. I spent a majority of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd block figuring out how to grade essays. This meant coming up with what I thought made a good essay and why and how important each of those aspects were. In short it was a tornado inside my mind. You don't realize how hard this is until you have to do it. During 4th block, I applied the rules I had made for grading the essays and got to it. This was a great experience to show me how to make decisions when grading essays and making rubrics. I thought over and over about how I had graded them for the rest of the day. I did the best I could and I think I was fair, but I definitely questioned myself.

So my first day was spent learning just how much I don't know and doubting myself. And learning a little bit about how hard it is to grade a shortish five paragraph essay. I can't imagine how hard it will be to grade longer assignments or assignments with more components and requirements.

It was a good day though. My teacher is nice. The kids were nice. I have a desk- WIN. And while I felt in no way prepared to do what I did, I think we all felt that way. And all will feel that way for a while. This is new. Classes cannot prepare you for what actually happens when you stand up in front of 30 kids. (Or sit down at a desk with 30 essays.)