ECE with Ms. Christine

Well, it has been ages since I was on here.  Its so hard to believe how much has changed since my last few posts.  Before I get into my life over the last bit, I guess I want to talk about my vision for this.  Over the past year and a half or so my life has changed tremendously.  I am still incredibly passionate about education and about advocacy within education and that will still tremendously feature here.   I've also established that my passion is reading.  I want to feature more about the books that I am reading and posting reviews of them.  This will be the books that I read for pleasure, my books for professional development and my books that I am reading in the classroom.   Finally, I want to spend a bit of time on other things.  For example, what I'm watching on TV, what I'm wearing and possibly other great things for you.   As of right now I get no benefit from blogging, there are no affiliate links.   If that were...

I know that I've been missing in action for awhile now.  This semester has been challenging.  Amazing but challenging.  I'll post more about that soon.  But.. I was thinking ahead to summer and was wondering if anyone has signed up for the reading challenge at  https://www.goodreads.com/ .  I've signed up for this challenge each year but I've always set my goal higher than I can ever achieve.  This year, I'm late to sign up but am doing so now in anticipation of summer break and the reading I will be doing.  It is a great motivation to get myself to keep reading and ensure that I am taking time to read the things that I enjoy.  On that note...does anyone have book recommendations for summer?  These can be either professional books or just fun books that you have enjoyed recently. Thanks for reading, Christine

I don't have the right words to express how amazing the experience was that I had as pre-service practicum student.  I was placed in a Kindergarten classroom in an urban school.  This school is an International Baccalaureate school.  They are working to do some amazing things and my mentor teacher was probably the best match that I could have ever been given.  God definitely blessed me when I was given this mentor teacher. My mentor teacher is probably the most positive person I have ever met.  Which was really nice because I try to stay positive and happy but I know that there are times when I'm not.  From the first moment when I met her I knew that she was going to be very encouraging towards me.  This was so true same for my supervisor.  My first lessons with the students focused on teaching them social emotional skills and I taught them about being a "bucket filler" and "speaking giraffe."  I learned a lot about speaking giraffe myself....

I just wanted to check in quickly tonight and say that I'm alive and I survived my first semester of pre service teaching and this semester.  I have about a million things that I want to blog about that have happened and I hope to do a good amount of blogging while I'm off on break.  Student teaching was an amazing experience with the most amazing mentor teacher that I could ask for.  And I got married this semester!!!!!! So much to talk about.  I hope everything is good with everyone who may be reading and I will post again soon! 

This fall, I will be doing the first half (semester) of my student teaching experience at an International Baccalaureate school.  I was wondering if anyone out there knows anything about the International Baccalaureate early years programme or if anyone teaches at an International Baccalaureate School.  I want to know as much as I can about it.  I am researching the topic but I always feel that first hand experience is best. Looking forward to hearing about your experience.  :) Thanks Everyone, ~ Christine

Well, this morning I woke up to find that my grades for the summer semester had posted.   I was incredibly surprised and pleased to see a 4.0 for the semester.  It just goes to show what hard work and determination can do.  This is such a change considering I barely completed my undergraduate degree.    This just goes to show to me that once a person finds their calling and their passion there is no stopping them.   I'm just so very happy to finally have found mine.   

This past week was the end of the summer semester.  I am on pins and needles waiting for my grades to post.  I am pretty sure that I did very well in my Reading Endorsement Course.  In this course I was able to develop a plan and tutor a student for six weeks.  It was a short period of time but it was still a great learning experience.  I also took Emergent Literacy.  This course was incredibly difficult.  The professor was nice, but the course was set up in such a way that it challenged me more than any other course that I have taken thus far in my course work. More importantly this weekend was an incredibly amazing weekend.  My best friend in the education program got married on Saturday.  AND while we were at her reception, I got news that my best friend of the past 5 years was in labor.  She is like a sister to me and I was so excited to know that my niece was about to be born.  She recently moved out of the state (back closer ...