Teaching
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| Image Source: Personal Photo |
My name is Cait O'Connor. I am a preschool special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools. I am going into my third year of teaching. I teach in a 3 year old blended classroom. I have a wonderful team that I work with everyday. My co-teacher, my special education classroom assistant (SECA) and I work extremely well together, which makes all the difference in the world. I graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 2019 and shortly after student teaching I started my ESL endorsement. Now I am currently finishing up my Masters. The first 2 years of my teaching career has not gone like how I pictured it. I would have never expected to have to teach through a pandemic. Before Covid-19, I student taught from August of 2019- early December of 2019, and I got hired 3 days after I finished student teaching. I started teaching right after Christmas break. This means I only had about 2 1/2 months of a normal school year. Once schools started closing, I kept thinking that there was no way that we were only going to be out of school for 2 weeks. I would have never imagined it to be over a whole year. I was always told in school that teaching is nothing but on the job learning. I found this to be true in college, while student teaching, and certainly now.
Coaching
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| Image Source: Personal Photo |
When I'm not at school or doing work for my masters, I am coaching high school cheerleading. While in high school I had always said to my coach that once I graduated college I would come back and coach. Here I am today going on my 3rd year of coaching and my 2nd year as the head coach. I coach two teams this year. I coach Varsity and Junior Varsity. Varsity is a sideline and a competitive team. Junior Varsity is sideline only. Sideline is when a team just cheers on the sideline for football and basketball games. Competitive is when a team gets a routine for the season and works to perfect it for competitions against other schools. Coaching takes up a lot of my time but it is something that I really enjoy doing. I got to coach my youngest sister for 2 years and I get to coach with 2 other girls that I cheered with while in high school. Coaching high school girls is the exact opposite of my kids at school. This makes a perfect balance but also is extremely exhausting.
Freetime  |
| Image source: Personal photo |
In any freetime that I have I like to spend time with my family, my boyfriend, my friends, and my dog. I also enjoy spending time at my families lake houses or traveling. Before covid I got to travel to Paris and Hawaii. My family and I were planning a trip to Ireland for last summer but we have postponed that for now. Another hobby that I have is I like to do crafts and create things for my classroom. I could spend hours on Pinterest or Etsy looking for things that I can make for my classroom, for my family, or for my cheerleaders. One of my favorite crafting pastime is my Cricut. A Cricut is a machine that can cut, draw, and make many different craft items. If you want to learn more about a Cricut, you can watch this video! I also enjoy relaxing by doing yoga, skin care, and watching some of my favorite
shows. My favorite tv show of all time is Friends, it is just a feel good show! |
| Image source: Personal photo |
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| Image Source: Personal photo |
I am looking forward to this class and learning different things about technology. I enjoy finding new things that I can incorporate into my daily routine. With having remote students last year and now always having that possibility, technology is so important. I am excited to take what I learn and apply it into my classroom!
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How wonderful that you have the perspective of teaching our itty bitty learners and then you get to mentor and coach at the high school level as well! Last year's closures were stunning to everyone. Moving forward it'll be interesting to see if you think a "normal" full school year in person is easier! Looking forward to getting to know you through your blog this fall.
ReplyDeleteHello Cait! I couldn't help but relate to your and everything you have been through these past 3 years! I too graduated in 2019 and I started teaching in the Fall. It has been tough, but having those amazing coworkers does make teaching a lot easier during these unprecedented times. I must say, I give you tons of credit for working with those tiny humans! When I first started teaching 1st grade, I though that was hard but I can only imaging what it is like to teach preschool. - On a side note from teaching, you said you have traveled to Paris. WAY COOL! I would love to go to France. I took French all 4 years in high school and would love the opportunity to practice some French. Also, I got a chance to go to Northern Ireland in college (hope to visit Ireland in the future). It was absolutely gorgeous! Anyway, thanks for sharing a bit about you! :)
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