Back to the Books

So, it's been awhile since I was a student. I taught students for a bit, but actually being a student...well, that's another story. I had always planned on going on to get my masters and/or PhD, but that is still down the road. And quite frankly, after Samantha was born, my priorities greatly changed. Greatly. One thing that I most definitely want to do though, is keep my teaching certificate current. No problem. Except there is a problem. I recently discovered, upon stumbling over my certificate which is hidden in the depths of our storage closet, that my blessed license expires June 30, 2008. Yep. That's pretty soon. You need 100 points to renew the license and I have 59 points from teaching. How to make up the difference?

There is a workshop at BYU in June for Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers that I am planning on attending. (I started a book last summer and plan on finishing it. I decided that attending this workshop would not only give me the motivation to finish it, but it would give me a ton of good, practical information about publishing, finding a good editor, etc. And since we are in Provo for only a few months longer, I wanted to take advantage of the amazing opportunity to meet with authors, publishers, etc. Now, finding babysitters...) I found out that the workshop will give me an additional 17.5 points. Yippee. But, still not enough.

I have tried to claim some old points from when I was working...2 years ago...but Alpine District wasn't willing to go back through shredded papers so I could get 5 points here and 10 points there. Sheesh. So, here it is folks. I have enrolled in on Independent Study class through BYU which will give me all the points I need, and some. That's great. But I have to finish it in about 3 weeks. I thought, "No sweat. I'm an intelligent person." Well, intelligence mattereth not when you have kids. It is taking a long time to read through 20 pages of fact filled academic writing. So far I've made it through one lesson a day. But I still have assignments and a final to make it through. THEN it has to appear on my transcript in time. Prayers would be useful at this point. So, what's the class I am taking? Sec Ed 515: Writing Instruction (Academic and Professional Writing: Content and Mechanics). It should be fairly easy for me. And really, the class isn't that demanding, it's just the time. Shoot, I don't even have to write a paper to demonstrate my knowledge of writing quality content with perfected mechanics. Pllllease. You would NEVER see me teaching my students writing without having to write. Nevertheless, I am so grateful for this course so I can possibly get my license renewed without penalty. I'll let you know how it goes. Until then...I'm on to lesson 3.