Back to school!

This will be a long one as it allows me to gush about my first day back at school. Feel free to read in sessions or just skim or skip altogether ;).

I had my first day of my mandatory orientation for teacher's college today. It's mandatory because it's considered part of our courses and we're expected to use the ideas we learn these 4 days (we get Friday off) throughout the rest of the year and even in our practicum. (Any faculty of education is pretty strict about absences, including absence from orientation...not like I'd planned on missing it anyway...I need my schedule and to know where my host school is, after all!) I took the bus there because York knows it's a commuter school and charges outrageous parking rates; as a result, my plan at the moment is that on the days when I am only on Keele campus, I will take the bus, and on the days when I am at my practicum school, I will drive.

I was given my first task of the school year when one of our course directors arrived and only I and a couple other people were in the classroom pretty early. My task was...to set out plates and napkins. They fed us bagels (a choice of 3 or 4 different kinds, even, with a choice between 3 different kinds of cream cheese) and juice (a choice of apple or Five Alive)! If I'd known that was going to be coming, I wouldn't have eaten breakfast! A lot of others said the same thing. Well, we were given a break later in the day so the bagels and juice did get thoroughly enjoyed after all, so the food was not wasted and the professors who provided the goodies were not insulted/disappointed.

Today we did the usual "getting to know you" kind of stuff. Well, I say "usual" because that is usual for, say, a camp setting or a class of children. It's quite unusual for what I've seen of university education the past 5 years or so. We had to talk to our "elbowmate" and find out his or her full name and the story behind it. Later we were given sheets with one of those grids on it where you have to get someone to sign who has bungee jumped, one who has a green thumb, one who can name four characteristics of a dwarf planet, and so on, and turned loose to try and complete them in 15 minutes. Also, throughout the day we were asked questions and asked to introduce ourselves before we answered...and then were often asked to recall the names of others who had responded previously! Yikes. I'm not so good with names so I was kind of glad I didn't respond to questions aloud today, though I will have to do that more soon so I can make a good impression and get participation marks. Oh, in our class of 60 people (that's just those in the J/I and I/S programs who have teachable subjects in Math, Science and/or Technology--the MST program--not those in the whole Faculty of Education, whom we will be all together with on Thursday morning), two have been bungee jumping...one guy and one gal.

We had a mini-lecture on relationships and "emotional trust" today...complete with lots of questions to think about and exchange ideas with different people around the room on (more getting-to-know-you, i.e.). Our lecturer made the point that a student likely will not remember the Pythagorean Theorem 15 years down the road, but they will remember the day your fly was down the entire class, and they will remember if you cared about them/encouraged them or if you told them they would never amount to anything. He also reminded us that the girl sitting in the chemistry class you are trying to teach may not hear a word you're saying because she is busy wondering when her boyfriend is going to kiss her (or thinking about any other of a multitude of issues laden with emotions and insecurity). It's good to be reminded what it was like to be a teenager...he basically told us it's not about teaching them to be good scientists/mathematicians (he said he'd never taught a one of those), but future good citizens.

We weren't fed lunch today, but there will be a pizza lunch Wednesday hosted for us by one education-related organization (the York/Seneca Institute for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, or YSIMSTE) and a BBQ hosted for us on Thursday by another education-related organization (the Faculty of Education Students Association, or FESA...gotta love acronyms :P). Free food? I'm there! I bought myself some Japanese food for lunch today after my attempts to go with some other people for lunch kinda fizzled out, but on my way back way too early for the next session I ran into a classmate who needed to find a place to buy gum, so we went off exploring some. 'Twas fun. Been a while since I met some new classmates to hang out with.

Today I was re-introduced to FirstClass as well. Some of you will know and love this from the days when ScriBE was around...the electronic bulletin board of the Scarborough Board of Education. Well, the Faculty of Education at York uses it. I've downloaded it, I've got an e-mail address through it, I've been led through our tutorial today through sending e-mails to classmates (when we were told to send an e-mail to a classmate, one of my new friends sent me an e-mail saying, "no passing notes in class!" tee-hee, oops!) and conferences (forums) and pulling them back so no one could read them anymore (don't you ever wish you had that "unsend"/"recall" button in regular e-mail?). You can even pull up the message's history to see who's read it (and therefore whom you have to apologize to because you didn't hit "unsend" in time). There's now an address book as part of the system, the résumé is now a full contact card where you can put your phone number and photo and such rather than just a bunch of text, there is now a way to access the FirstClass system using just a standard web browser (though using the stand-alone software is more reliable), and there are all sorts of interesting discussions going on in the forums, such as tips on the interview the Toronto District School Board gives and a whole section where people post lesson plans so others can use them, too. Well, it's not as interesting as ScriBE was yet (it will get more interesting when we start interacting on it as a class), but I'm still kinda tickled that I'm using the software again that my hubby and I used to chat and send those gushy e-mails when we first started dating.

At a certain point during the day those of us who were recent grads from York (as in those of us who just got our degrees and are going straight into the B.Ed. program without going out into the workforce first or coming from another university) were asked to show ourselves. Of my class of 60, apparently ten of us fall into that category. Later in the day we were asked to stand up again and volunteer to lead people on tours of our campus based around different themes (listed on a sheet everyone was given) so everyone could find the things they needed to know about. Turns out there weren't ten categories so I didn't have to lead my own tour; instead, I joined the tour of the guy who got "volun-told" by the course director to show people where to look after getting parking permits...and he said he would also explain where to party/get a drink on campus. Our tour became the "parking and paryting tour" (one of my new friends realized this meant it was also the "drinking and driving tour," but after we laughed loud at that at first we decided that was no laughing matter..."parking and partying" it is). I figured of all the tours being given I knew the least about where to drink on campus, so I went to learn something. I didn't really learn much (I knew where the Underground & Blueberry Hill were...though a couple pubs were briefly mentioned I might not have known about), but we had a fun tour anyway. Then we went home.

Tomorrow I get to do the True Colors workshop. Again. I've done True Colors at least twice in the past, although I have to admit I don't remember a whole lot about it other than the fact that I think I'm a blue and I think my friend Jen is an orange. Well, this time I suppose we will focus on not only discovering ourselves but on looking at how having a blend of the colors in the classroom can have an impact on group dynamics and teaching style or whatever (only guessing here), so it should still be interesting to learn from.

Wednesday afternoon we will visit our host schools. Aie! This is when the jitters will come up again as I wonder if my host teacher(s) will like me, whether the kids will like me, etc. At one point the course director said this will just be a "drive-by" to see where the school is, but then he started telling us to go in, that we'd be given contact names and so on (you mean you're not coming with us???)...aie. So this will probably be when I'll meet my host teacher(s). I just hope we'll get along well.

Well, that's been my day. I still don't know what all my textbooks are going to be (and hence don't quite know how much $ I'll have to spend on them), I still don't know what my host school is, and I still don't know how an apparent conflict in my schedule is going to work itself out. However, I do know that I will have a lot of Fridays off (all Fridays on which we are not invited to special seminars or conferences) and I have had a number of other questions answered today. I've made some friends, too, and have generally gotten along well with my classmates it seems. So...I'm pretty pleased. Still nervous, and will be for some days until I settle into the swing of things, but I think I am going to get through this year alright. Then I am off to the real world! That thought is still slightly terrifying...yes, I do have this year to do before I am out there, but we were told a couple times today that the year is just going to fly by on us. This means it is going to feel like I am facing the real world much sooner than I may like...still, God has guided me every step of the way to this point...He's not going to drop me flat on my face now. Breathe in, breathe out...I'm okay. Bring on the opening week practicum block!