The Stages of Teaching

First-year teachers go through stages (and I know that I am very susceptible to the feelings associated). The first stage is idealism. The new teacher is so full of hope and is going to make things better and touch every single student. The next stage is disillusionment. All the bureaucracy and Political Correctness and paperwork starts to add up, and you begin to feel overwhelmed with the responsibilities and the frustrations that come with it. Then, you realize that some of the students don't want to learn, and some of them are more interested in making your life a living _____.

So, anyway, after that, you either give in to the disillusionment and stop teaching, or you battle through it and enter the realism stage. In the realism stage, you know that you will not reach every student, but you can at least try. Some students will get it, but others will not, and there is nothing you can do to reach some. You can reach a couple you never thought you would. A girl that was in a few of my classes at BYU-Idaho got hired here also. She resigned at the disilluionment stage. The thoughts did cross my mind, but failure is just not an option for me. The good thing is that my vice principal restored some of that hope that gets lost so quickly. I really love this job. I am excited when I get up for work each day (even though I don't get up on time most days).

GRE

I took the GRE today. I got a 490 on the Verbal section, and a 620 on the Quantitative. I am going to be honest, I don't know exactly what those scores mean. I know that one of my buddies who just took it said that he wanted to get above 500 on both sections, so I think that I did rather well on the Quantitative. There is also an Analytical section. It contains 2 essays that I had to write in 45 and 30 minutes, respectively. They will send me those scores later. They are scored on a scale of 0-6, with six being the best. I will let you know how those went.
Staci looked on BYU's website and it said that for the 2003-2004 school year the average score for BYU grad students was 493 verbal and 585 quantitative. So, I think that I should be in good shape on my applications...if I can ever get them done.

Graduation

Staci and I graduated from BYU-Idaho last night from 7:30 to eternity! It took so long. Elder Monte J. Brough was the final speaker. He gave a great talk, but it sure was long...AND, I just wanted to get out of there. Staci was lucky enough to be the last person to walk across the stage. That means that everyone who was holding their applause could not hold it any longer and they gave Staci a standing ovation. That was pretty sweet. She deserves it. We are going to move to Salt Lake City the day after Christmas and live with my brother for a couple months until we find a place of our own. We are just happy to be done with school.