Welcome back, me!

Well, after a nice long blog vacation (I seriously considered writing "blog-cation," but wouldn't have been able to forgive myself), I'm back in action for 2014!

My actual vacation, of course, wasn't quite so long. But I managed to do a lot - both of the "lots of fun" and the "this is a vacation" variety?

The timeline: 
My Term III assignment was due on December 13th; my first day back in the classroom was January 2nd. That gave me just under three weeks - much better than the absurd 8 days (12/24-1/1) that the public schools had off, but much less than my grad school colleagues who are just returning to class today.

So what did I do with that time?

• Took (and passed!) my certification exams. FYI: Pennsylvania has a new test (the PECT, or Pennsylvania Educator Certification Test), and it is MUCH harder than previous certification assessments. The reputation of the old exams was that they were a breeze, but the PECT was actually pretty tough. Some of the challenging questions were pedagogy or psychology questions that we perhaps could have been better prepared for by our classes (although I doubt that would have been worthwhile from a "learning" standpoint, only from a "make sure you can identify this concept by name so you can answer standardized test questions" standpoint. Hmm, that dilemma sounds familiar...). Other questions were of the sort that you really couldn't possibly study for - pointed content questions, sometimes about strangely specific facts about health, literature, music, etc. Oof. Like I said, I passed - cutting it quite close on one of the modules, comfortably on the other two - so I don't have to worry about retaking it. Now all I have to do is graduate!
• I also went ahead and took the Praxis exam for Social Studies content area certification. I don't expect to end up using it, but if I wasn't seeking elementary certification I would probably have gone for secondary SS; by passing the exam (which I did), I'm now set up so that I can add-on Secondary Social Studies certification once I get my Elementary certificate. In other words, I'll be qualified to teach Pre-K - 4th & 7th - 12th. And unqualified to teach 5th and 6th grade. Education policy is confusing sometimes.
• Student teaching - I had my final day in my fall student teaching classroom, which was a bit sad; I also had my first day in my winter/spring student teaching classroom, which was very exciting! (Since then, of course, I've begun student teaching in earnest in my new classroom - I'll have a report on that soon).
• Work (get paid) - did some work in admissions, and also did some freelance copyediting work for a company I used to work for. For all the people who ask (I'll probably reiterate this later): it IS possible to work during the program, it IS extremely hard to pull off during the fall semester, however. I know one member of my cohort managed it; for my part, I've been lucky enough to be able to do contract-based work, which I did a bit in the summer, stopped entirely for the fall, then resumed over the break. Not sure yet whether I'll do some during the spring, but it seems possible so far... (P.S. if you're looking for a freelance copyeditor/proofreader for hire...you know how to reach me.)
• Travel (a bit) - went to visit my mother in Charlottesville, Virginia; had a relatively quiet couple days with music, games, and beginning to deal with my monster backlog of emails. If you've ever emailed me and I haven't replied -- now's the time to try again, I'll do better I swear!
• Saw some movies - among them, American Hustle, Anchorman II, Dallas Buyer's Club, and The Hobbit, not to mention Clue, X-Men, and the first episode of Sherlock. Yeah...eclectic.
• Social life started to get back into gear! Dinner with friends! Football watching with friends! Board games with friends! Hiking, singing, cooking -- doing things that were NOT study parties, which were frankly my primary means of socializing in the fall. We even threw an epic New Years party at my place. Awesome.
• Cleaned my room. Guys, I did it. I really did it.

Bring the Spring.