Greetings Fellow Xangans!  No, I have not died, vanished or disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.  Instead, I have been sucked into the void that is my masters program.  To give you a brief taste of my world, here is my daily (abbreviated) schedule:

Monday AM: Class
Monday PM: Work

Tuesday AM: Practicum (which is basically class, but at an elementary school)
Tuesday PM: Student Teaching (at a different elementary school)

Wednesday AM: Class
Wednesday PM: Work

Thursday AM: Practicum
Thursday PM: Work

Friday AM: Class
Friday PM: Work

And that, Ladies and Gents, is why I have no life, and why I have not been on Xanga.

While running around like a chicken with my head cut off and never knowing which school/class I'm supposed to be in when and what project is due for which class and when is overwhelming, to say the least, I am LOVING my program.  I love the first graders from my student teaching school and I love the second graders from my practicum school and I love my fellow teachers-in-training and our own teachers and the material I'm learning.  It's all fun and fascinating to me, which is awesome because I'd hate to be away from Jack for anything less than that. 

To amuse you all, and perhaps make up for my prolonged absence, I will share with you some of my favorite gems from my first and second graders.

Gem #1
On the second day of school we asked the first graders to draw a picture of themselves on the first day of school.  This involved asking them to remember the day before and what they were wearing and how they had their hair, etc.  One of the boys, who is a very skinny boy, started to draw a picture of a very chubby boy.  Confused, he looked at his picture and then up and me and he said, "I can't remember who I was yesterday!"  CRACKED me up. 

Gem #2
Just yesterday in my practicum school one of the second graders looked at me and asked, "Are you tired?"  Confused, I said, "No, I'm not really feeling tired today," to which she responded "Oh.  Because you have one big eye and one small eye."  WTF?!  Thank you, adorable second grader.  I am now and forever going to be paranoid that I have uneven and mismatched eyes.

Gem #3 (and this is my favorite)
On my last full day of student teaching before my own classes started, my first graders had their first day in the Media Center.  Now, in case you don't know this about me (and really, if you're a reader of my blog, you should by now), I LOVE BOOKS.  Especially children's literature, which is what I'd eventually like to get my doctorate in.  So, for me, going to the Media Center is like visiting Mecca.  There is one boy in my class (we'll call him Mark), who is...a handful.  He often has a very "tough guy" persona and is very confrontational with the other students.  So we were in the Media Center and he was walking around, looking bored and not caring in the least about choosing a book, and he just happend to be in the C section by the Eric Carle books.  I leaned over and I said, "Hey Mark, Eric Carle is one of my very favorite authors, do you know why?"  "Why?" he asked me, disinterested.  "Because, almost all of his books have something special about them.  Like this one," I said, pulling out The Very Busy Spider.  "In this one, the spider web is raised so that it actually feels like a spider web.  And as the story goes on it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it takes up the whole page!"  I started to put the book back to show him a different Eric Carle book, but Mark grabbed it out of my hand and said "NO, I want this one!"  He checked out his book and went to sit with the other students who were done.  Later, when I walked by him, he was showing his book to a couple other boys.  He was turned to the page with the full spider web and he was running his hands over the web and saying proudly, "THIS one is the BIGGEST one!"  I have no idea if that moment turned Mark into a reader, or even into a fan of Eric Carle.  But he found a book he liked, and in that moment, that was everything to me.      

And now, because this post has gone on long enough, I will leave you tonight with a couple random Jack pictures.  Because who doesn't like adorable pictures of my son?