Oh Ya... We Have Life to Do.

After our wedding, honeymoon, and moving in, it was time to face the real world again. Not only was it the real world, but it was a complete unknown. Jeff had just moved here and was starting his job search and I was going to move from classes and homework to actual (practice) teaching….with real students :S. Not only were these students real…but they were kindergarten, an age that I had only a year ago said I would NEVER want to teach. The night before my first day I took all my lesson plans I had ever written, all my text books and class notes, and began to review. I had my Extra large pink binder sorted and ready to go with all the important papers I would need to fill out and turn in, blank lined paper to write on and pens and pencils. I had no idea what this was going to be like, and no idea what to expect, so I prepared for everything. After skimming through all of my books and notes I realized…I’ve got this. I know what all of these books are telling me! After realizing that, and remembering that the first two weeks in student teaching were just observation, I calmed down a bit and was able to just look forward to what God was going to have me do this next semester.  And it was awesome. I was in a kindergarten class of 24 students (16 of them were learning English as their second language) and an AMAZING teacher. My cooperating teacher taught me so much. She showed me how to have truly high expectations, a solid structured class, and how to use any different possible pathway to get the information to reach the students’ brains. She also taught me how to work hard, by week eight or so, I had taken over all of the lesson planning and teaching and I swear, I never once saw her sit down and not do anything. She was always making flash cards for the kids to take home, or working on their assessment book and seeing what they needed work on. She gave me books, print outs, lesson plans, manipulatives, worksheets, laminated projects…everything that the kids did, I have a copy of. I have her music that we did every morning and the laminated turtle that hung in the back for the kids to talk to when they had to tattle. I was stretched and taught and provided with the opportunity to prove myself, not only to my advisors, but to myself as well.

I loved my student teaching experience, every day of it, and am so thankful that God gave me that opportunity. I miss my kids and love to go back and visit them and see how much they have learned since the last time I saw them; everyday they learn something new that I never (at the beginning of the year) would have thought they would know. Now I am more interested in teaching the lower grades, and there is a 1^st grade teacher at that school that is retiring…so I could potentially get that job and be teaching some of the same kids I had last year!

Meanwhile, the first month or so of me student teaching,  Jeff was job hunting. He had an interview with American Family Insurance to manage all the computers and networks of all of the agents in Nebraska. It was a good job that offered him the fulltime position he was looking for, but it involved traveling all over Nebraska to take care of everything and he would be the only one doing this job. Thankfully, very soon after his interview with them, he had an interview with the company he had worked for in Fort Dodge to do a contract job with Prime Therapeutics in Omaha.  Having a contract job wasn’t as stable as a fulltime job, but everyone there was saying that was how they hired on their employees, was through the contract agency, so he took it. A few months later he got hired on full time and is now working there fulltime! This has been a huge blessing as it is a great job, especially for someone his age. He helps run all the computers and networks in the Omaha branch of Prime Therapeutics.

We are so blessed that he has a solid job as I was not able to make really any money while student teaching (though I did work evenings at the Grace Library) and am still not making as much subbing.

During this time we also ended up buying a new (used) car for Jeff as his was acting up and not dependable. We both had some money saved up and were able to get him a ’03 Monte Carlo, which he loves. Through our first six months of marriage we have been able to look back and see how God has provided everything that we need and taken care of us.