My first blog EVER!

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Hello there!

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So, I'm Kate, a senior in college finishing up with the secondary education program. I have spent most of this fall semester at a high school near my university, and these past two weeks have been teaching two courses (11th grade World History, and 8th grade Civics) full time. In general I have been having a blast this semester. Although there is still a month of classes left, I feel like I have made such strides in all the strategies I have learned, all the mistakes I have made and learned from (I have a couple doozies that I'll share later) and also just the friendships I have formed inside the education program and out.

I decided to sign up for a Travel Blog because while I studied abroad in Venezuela last May I did not keep up with emails or phone calls as much as I would have liked! This time around, I hope to do a lot of things differently. I want to keep connected with everyone-family, my loving boyfriend, friends at school and my friends who will be student teaching in Minnesota and abroad. I also want to experience more of the culture while I am there, the museums, plazas, historical places, and everything in-between. While I will be traveling alone to Madrid, I will have a roommate. Her name is Amanda and we both will be student teaching at King's College Madrid. If I end up traveling to Paris she will be a great asset since she is going to teach French! From her emails it looks like we have a lot in common, and most importantly both have a passion to teach.

Although I am very excited to student teach, I am looking at it with some frustration since I have already been in someone else’s classroom, taught their students, and I feel like I just want to have my own classroom and my own students! That is probably the most frustrating part. Within the two weeks I taught the two classes I felt more comfortable in front of them but at the same time did not get to a point where I felt completely myself while teaching. My experience at King's College will be for 10 weeks, and I hope in that time I can really bond with my classes and finally be MYSELF when teaching. But once again, it will not be my classroom or my students. Of course I am going to try to reach this comfort level as soon as possible but it is not something I can rush into.

I am leaving in:

00
DAYS 

00
HOURS 

00
MINS 

00
SECS

!!!

Until then,

~Kate

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