the light at the (almost) halfway point in the tunnel

so in oakland, there is a tunnel that goes under several big wide streets with fast traffic. it goes between the lake and the henry j. kaiser convention center. it's kind of a creepy tunnel, but it's better than playing in traffic which is often what you have to do if you don't want to go in the tunnel. there is also a tunnel entrance at the median between the two roads. so you get halfway through the tunnel, there is light from a staircase, and then you go through the rest of it. i'm almost at the staircase. i get to climb out of the tunnel for a little while, in one week. whoo hoo!!!

the last few weeks have been a total roller coaster. i have been working on that assessment for my credential program which i finally finished last wednesday night. oddly, wednesday was this incredible day of teaching. i had probably the best class i've ever had with my period 1/2 class. i did have a pretty cool lesson, to my credit. my kids (i think) are getting what i am teaching, which is mood and setting. my TFA mentor came and observed me and as jesse said, i have a "teacher crush" on her. if you don't operate in the land of allyson's brain, that means that i really look up to her and think she's incredibly cool and helpful and smart and competent and neat and i know she was a great teacher. it's an "i want to be like you when i grow up" crush except that, oddly, we are exactly the same age. she feels like she's 5-6 years older than me, mostly because she has so much more knowledge about teaching. also, she just got married. she has grown up very quickly, as TFA staff members often seem to do. it's very interesting.

anyways, she observed this cool lesson i taught and here is a quote from the email she sent me afterwards:
"Thanks for having me in your classroom, Allyson. What a phenomenal way to teach the concept of mood. I definitely wish I had used this when I was teaching 8th grade! I’m really excited to meet with you and to figure out where your kids are at. I have FULL CONFIDENCE that you’ll be able to get them to wherever they need to go. Your hard work is clearly paying off…"

um--wow, what a compliment! this made me feel incredibly good in the midst of a very hard and tiring week. that same day, i had a meeting with her which was very helpful and got me all jazzed and motivated to do more planning. currently i'm writing a test that i will give my kids to take on thursday. once i finish writing the test, i basically have the whole week planned out. it's a pretty cool system. the thing you're REALLY supposed to do is write the test before you even begin teaching the unit.

so that was the high of the week. the lows were plentiful. basically, they amounted to incredibly tight shoulders and a tense jaw for the six days that i was working on my assessment for my credential program. i did minimal planning and no grading for those six days. the time i spent working on it was like pulling teeth. on the bright side, finishing it gave me such an incredible mood change that i feel like a new person now.

so the last week was really hard overall, but i finished my assessment which was a great feeling. i had a work holiday party thursday night, and then a good friend flew in from texas on friday. she is visiting until christmas day. i had dinner with her and some other friends on friday night, and then just had a quiet hanging out night with them.

yesterday (saturday) was an incredible, glorious, heavenly day--it was the first day that i took off of work since thanksgiving break. i got letters and cards and care packages together to send out, went to the farmers market, out to lunch with (with friends including the one visiting), did some fun errands, and then went to sacramento to the holiday party of an old friend.

i didn't really know how the party would be--but it ended up being incredibly fun. there was a trivia quiz (which jesse is very good at, and was a fun structured social opportunity with people who we didn't know) and overally it was just sooo fun and renewing. i realized this morning as i was emailing my mom about it that one great thing about it was that we didn't talk about work at all. that is rare but it was refreshing and i think we should do it more often!! :-)

now i am back in hyper fast-forward planning mode. it's not so fun but somehow it feels worth it. it's hard to explain why.

so back to the tunnel metaphor. i don't always feel like i'm in a tunnel, at least not in the negative way that you could interpret that concept. and the staircase halfway between the lake and the convention center is the semester mark, but really i see it as the winter break. it is not the exact halfway mark but it is close and it is going to be wonderful. we have a lot of fun things planned as well as a lot of relaxing. it's likely that my next post will be next weekend, once the week is over. it depends on how the week goes. i hope that yours is great!