Back to School!

I had an extreme career change two weeks ago when I took a leave of absence from my job and started student teaching in the 4th grade! It's actually been a long time coming, since Dan and I started our master's degrees in elementary education 5 years ago in Denver. We took all the coursework together, but when it was time to student teach, I kept working while he finished the program. This year is my deadline for finishing my degree, so my boss and I came to an agreement for me to take a leave of absence as long as I: 1) stuck around long enough for him to hire someone else and have me train them to take my place, and 2) promised to hate everything about the teaching profession and come back to work the minute I finished my student teaching! Fortunately for me, #2 didn't come true, because I'm having a blast in the classroom so far!

There are 28 kids in the class, and my teacher is fantastic. 4th grade was my top choice, because they're at that glorious age where they're old enough to be pretty independent, but they're still really sweet kids who love their teacher. :) The school where I'm working (Kate Sessions Elementary) is only about a mile from our house, so I can bike there when I feel like it (it hardly ever happens).

I haven't started officially teaching anything yet, but I think I'll need to in the next week or so. My teacher really loves her job and doesn't seem to be in a big hurry to pass things off to me. But I'm supposed to take over the subjects little by little until I'm running the show at the end of my 15 weeks in the classroom. Then I'll earn my CO teaching license, and who knows when I'll do anything with it, but it'll be great to have it as an option and it's fun to do something completely different for a while! I'll be done student teaching in early March, and it's a blessing to know that I've got my job waiting for me when I'm finished - especially with the job market so tough right now. God is good!