stalling

I should be doing so many other things right now, but here I am blogging!

It's incredible to me how much we have all (I certainly have) learned--I remember feeling like it would be impossible that I'd ever feel ready to step into a classroom after only a year of training, and it's amazing to say that, yes, I *do* feel ready! (Or, at least, I'm confident that I will!)

Which is not to say that I don't realize that there is still a long (endless!--I hope) road of learning ahead. Already, I think back on the unit plan that I did last semester for my methods class--a 125 page document that I thought so clearly articulated my values as an educator. A mere two months later, and I think about how much more I could have done to address community-building in my classroom, something that I'm growing increasingly passionate about.

I've been trying to do ice-breakers with my students every couple of days, even just little things--like asking a couple different students every day to do Two Truths and a Lie. S. talked to us about how very underrated she thinks the importance of caring and relationship building is in teaching. As M. always says, we don't teach Spanish (or whatever), we teach kids.

And I am just crazy about my students. I think back to a time when I was considering changing my placement and I appreciate so very much how much my students and I have done to build relationships together, because it would be heartbreaking now to be anywhere else.

The importance of this relationship building has really been confirmed for me these past few incredible days. One: there was a student who I just thought was lovely from day one, a funny, earnest girl who was asking my mentor teacher about how she might get into studying linguistics. I tried chatting with her every day but she was strangely kind of dismissive of me. But now, she talks to me every day: we talk about the music she likes (she listens to all kinds of Brazilian and French music, and asks me to translate things for her!), and she asked me to help her translate a Shakira song that she wants to sing for some upcoming auditions at the school. Yesterday after class she asked me if she could sing to me, and she sang her song and the voice that came out was surprisingly sturdy and beautiful. I teared up as she stood in front of me, shyly looking away and clutching her close to her. I praised her and told her how honored I was that she would share that song with me, and I meant it.

I was talking with another student yesterday, M, a Mexican American girl with whom I connected right away, back in September (her desk was by my desk in the back, where I spent a lot of time observing, initially). She was telling me about her trip over Christmas break (a trip that went a month longer than planned because, as she and her mother explained, Mexican officials wouldn't let her younger sister return alone to the U.S. with only M. as her guardian unless they paid a lot of money). Anyway, she started telling me about how her dad had always beat her mom (they were divorced) and now he beats his new wife, and how he has a temper and M. would get scared alone in the house with her sister, dad and his new wife while her dad was beating the new wife. I asked her, "M, are you safe alone with your dad?" she assured me that he's never laid a finger on her, her brother or sister but that he has always been violent with women. I didn't know what to do, she said she didn't understand how a woman could be with a man who treated her like that, and I said to her that she should know there are people one can talk to or places to go for help if one ever was in a situation like that. I didn't quite know what to say. But this moment really underscored for me S's point that, as teachers, we are going to her all sorts of things from our students--especially if we start asking questions and listening. It really hit home for me the fact that teaching our content area is one part of what we do--but that there is this whole other important part that can't be ignored.

I have another student, a shy, very girly African American girl who is quite disengaged in class. Recently I've been trying to get my students to do more free writing--they have so little experience being creative with the language and producing original work, and I want them to see how Spanish can apply to their lives. She wrote something on her paper about loving her girlfriend. I thought that she might have written the wrong ending (the words for boyfriend and girlfriend, after all, are only different by one vowel), because I just wouldn't have thought she was gay (which is just stereotyping on my part, and I should know better!). Since she had made some grammatical errors, I approached her about it. I said, "D, you wrote something on your paper that you turned into me, but I wanted to help you a little with your grammar! So tell me first what you were trying to say. She said, "I love my girlfriend and she loves me, too!" So I helped her fix her errors (she'd written "I love YOU my girlfriend"and hadn't finished the rest). She was grinning at me as we wrote the new sentence out, and since then, she has been really open with me, and more engaged in class!

Perhaps the best thing to happen this week (which is saying a lot, because this week was amazing) was yesterday. D.J. is a boy who rarely turned in any work last semester. He's not loud, per se, but he is totally unengaged in class and just talks to his friends. He resisted so many of my efforts to push him or connect with him. He was failing and was on the list of students who receive those modified tests. Last semester I started really trying to get him to engage in class. I called on him, I'd bug him about his homework when he didn't turn it in. When he doesn't turn in a class assignment, I would hound him about it. I didn't want him to think that it was okay with me if he didn't do his work. I wanted him to know that I believed he was capable (and he totally is! I have worked one-on-one with him on a number of occasions and have been dazzled by his intelligence, especially considering how little he works in or out of class on Spanish). Now that he's officially in my class, I've really begun to do this more with him. I am also trying to get to know him. I know that he is good with computers, so we talk about that. I try to joke around with, or ask him about his family.

So Friday, I had to give the students the literacy test which I knew would be a drag for them, so I brought them in cookies. I stood at the door greeting them as they walked in, joking around with them, and telling them to grab a plate of cookies. At one point I had my back to the students entering at the door as I was talking to a student about something. All of a sudden, I feel someone reach behind me and wrap his arms around me. It's DJ, giving me a friendly hug! I turned around and said, "Hey you, bienvenido!" and he said, "Hey, teach." and went and got his stuff and sat down. It was a simple little moment, but it almost made me cry.

This week I had students interview each other about their families and I collected a small self-assessment at the end. As I walked around the room, I heard students talking to each other, if haltingly, in Spanish! Later, I saw that they had learned a lot of new things about each other. I can't tell you how heartening it was for me to see so many of my kids interested and engaged in this activity. When we give them a fill-in-the-blank worksheet, I get half the kids using the time just to talk or goof around and later they either turn in nothing, or they turn in a half-completed paper. But this task convinced me of the power of making learning meaningful for the students, because they all could tell me things about their friends when I asked--even the next day. "D.A., ¿cuántos hermanos tiene tu amigo DJ?" And he could tell me! ¿Quién tiene los ojos que cambian depende de su humor? They could tell me! ¿Quién tiene la mama que está embarazada? And then we had a talk about that. This activity also served to community build, because I asked kids to tell me about something they learned about their friend that they didn't know before, and then we shared those things with the class.

Monday begins a new week, and I am looking forward to it. Tomorrow I'm going to be doing a project with the kids using cell phones--I'm having them take photographs of them acting out certain verbs, which we are going to use in a review for their upcoming quiz. I told them on Friday to bring their cellphones (like I needed to remind them!) and they all started cheering! So they are excited about it; I just hope that the activity proves worthwhile in terms of the learning objectives that I'm trying to meet.

Although I have been teaching my two classes ever since we returned from break, Monday I begin the semester officially as their teacher!

It will be interesting and I'm quite nervous; I am planning on adopting several new routines that are going to be jarring for students who are used to being able to wander around when and where they want, and who are used to having lots of down time in which they can chat with friends. I'm in a placement where I don't get a lot of support for trying new things ("Did that turn out the way you hoped it would?" is what my mentor teacher frequently writes in the notebook she keeps while she observes me). So the fear of messing up or failing is acute. I feel like I have to prove her doubts wrong, but of course I am not 100% confident in my choices.

There is also the fact that I'm trying to develop these new routines--for instance, I want to let students work together much more than what they have been doing, but my mentor teacher says they'll just use that time to talk. And I worry very much that she's right! I don't know exactly how to ensure that they use the time productively. My methods teacher, to whom I owe so much of how I think of myself as a teacher today, says, "if you want something, get it." Meaning, if you expect something of your students, don't just wring your hands when you don't get it, but make sure you have a plan to get what it is that you expect.

One thing my mentor teacher is really excited about is the technology I've proposed using in class. She used to complain about teachers who check out the projector for the whole year. But when I went to check one out for a lesson I wanted to do that involved a power point presentation, I saw that there were three carts that are never checked out. I remembered the presentation by he three alumnae who came (this summer?) to talk to us about technology in their schools...the guy (I don't remember his name!) who taught at the IB school said that often there is technology in the school that sits collecting dust. So I checked out the projector for a week, and now my mentor teacher is totally on board. I teased her and said, "J, you are one of Those People now!"

She wants me to teach her how to use all these tools that I'm telling her about--I've started an Edmodo site for the class, and I'm giving the students a poll to take about their cell phones so I can see about using Wallwisher, Polls Everywhere, and having them to projects with photos they take with their cell phones and send to me, or doing scavenger hunts with their cellphones, etc. This is an interesting position for me, because I don't at all think of myself as particularly tech savvy. But her seeing me as the one to teach her about different tech tools gives me a sort of confidence that is inspiring me to seek out more information and try new things. I hope to update here about the things I try and do in class.

This week has been challenging, though. It has been exams week. That was the first thing that was really frustrating to me. The exam was a 100-question, multiple-choice Scantron exam. The questions on it were baffling. The students hardly ever learn about that "fifth skill" of WL learning, culture. They certainly never learn about it in any deep, critical, hands-on way. The "culture" portion of this class, such as it is, consists of them reading the little text boxes called "Nota Cultural" that are scattered throughout the chapters. The units barely have a theme, and the extent to which they do, culture is not a part of that theme at all. Students were told to read over those "Notas Culturales" to prepare for the exam. Here is an example of a question that came from the test: "Which of the following is NOT an example of something offered at the Fine Arts Museum of Mexico?" The choices were "dance classes; classes on Mexican culture; art exhibits; tours of bread shops." Seriously? So much for thoughtful assessments... Students were told to read the paragraph from the book about some museum in Mexico and memorize it for the test. Why? Why is that information important? What does that tell us about Mexican culture, that the museum offers certain classes? It outrages me to see students waste their time and brain cells uncritically memorizing pointless information like this.

Then, as I was proctoring my students' exam, my mentor teacher told me I needed to go next door to the Spanish I teacher's class, where a sub was proctoring the exam. My mentor teacher and this other teacher have created a "modified" versions of every quiz and test for students who are failing the class. This has been problematic for me from the beginning. For one, I have worked closely with the failing students in my class, and I have experienced firsthand that these are NOT kids with any kind of learning disability. These are kids who are, yes, by and large, checked out, who don't care, who don't try at all. But stupid they are not. And they *know* who gets these modified tests because my mentor teacher passes them out separately (when I pass out tests, I put the modified ones on the bottom and grab from the top or bottom, depending on who I'm giving the test to--which is kind of pointless at this point, actually, because the kids already know who gets the modified tests). In fact last week, I had an incident that broke my heart, when I asked a kid that I've been really pushing, a kid who is just totally "non-peforming," how his quiz went. He looked at me with this queer little twisted smile and said, "Bad." I asked him why and he says, "Because you forgot to give me the retard quiz." My heart just broke right there. I didn't even know what to say, so I told him, "D, we're gonna talk later." I wrote to my ed psych professor that night and got some great feedback from her. The next day, I told him I wanted to talk to him after class. I told him, "D. You broke my heart yesterday." He started getting kind of embarrassed, and I said, "Look, I know you're thinking, whatever, it's not that deep. But it is. Because I DON'T THINK YOU ARE DUMB. At all. I know you are a smart kid. And that's why I push you, D. Sra. G gives you these other tests because she wants to give you a stepping stone to start to help you succeed, but no one thinks you are dumb or that you can't do this. And I just want you to know that. And I want you to know that that's why I'm not going to stop bugging you to do your work." He smiled at me and said, "Yeah, ok." I have no idea what he thought, but I hope that he realizes that I believe in him. Because I do. I really do.

So then, I'm proctoring the exam for one of my classes and my mentor teacher tells me I need to go next door to the other Spanish class where the teacher is out and there is a sub because the sub forgot to give the "modified" (I put in quotes even thought it is, yes, modified--because really it's just dumbed-down--multiple choice with two choices instead of 4, all the conjugations written out, etc.) test to one student and I need to go and find him and give him the other test. The problem: a) I don't know this class and I have NO IDEA who this student is, so I have to somehow find him and interrupt a class of 30 quiet students who are taking their exam, ie, there's no way to do this and not embarrass this poor child, b) the test has already been going on for 20 minutes, so by the time I find him, he's already a quarter of the way through the test and the sub just tells him he has to begin again. He looked incredulous when I told him, and it made me sick. Later I told my mentor teacher that that made me really uncomfortable, but she just changed the subject. I really struggle with knowing to what extent it's appropriate to push her.

For instance we were doing the seating chart yesterday and she asked me to find a "nice white boy," to seat next to a new transfer student. Now, I can totally appreciate that she wanted to make this new student feel comfortable--but to frame that in terms of race?! Normally I can put on a good face with her, but I asked her point blank, "Why do we have to find a WHITE student to sit next to J?" and then she got kind of uncomfortable and started stammering that it didn't have to be a white student, but it did have to be someone nice and sensitive. As though the two are one and the same! So upsetting.

I am so grateful for all the work we did in my methods class with backward design, with thoughtful assessments, with classroom management and, perhaps above all, with our own, individual philosophy of teaching and learning. I am amazed at how clearly I see my identity as a teacher. I made a sort of poster for myself to hang over my desk to remind myself of my values as a teacher and to remind myself that my lessons and my teaching should always reflect those values. I wrote:

-self-assessment (teach students to assess their own work and performance)
-independence (teach students to be independent, let them make decisions about their own education)
-trust (trust that the majority of the students are going to do the right thing, and treat them accordingly)
-social justice/activism (I thank S for teaching us that teaching and activism need not be mutually exclusive)
-exploration/real-life learning (I want students to explore what is interesting and meaningful to them).
-cross-curricular teaching (I want students to make connections across content areas, and to strengthen skills that will serve them across content areas).
-study skills (it's important to me to teach how to be organized, how to take notes, how to read, etc.)
-intellectual character (I want students to think critically about things--more on that).
-caring (I try to get to know each of my students, and go out of my way to be kind to and care about even the most detached, eye-rolling, skeptical and apathetic among them)
-community (I want to build a community of learners in my class, building on each of their strengths and learning how to respect and value each other)
-respect (I will respect my students, their voice, their contribution, their autonomy...and I will expect them to respect me and each other by being prepared and coming to class ready to work).

This list has really been helpful to me as I go about designing lesson plans (to the extent to which I've been able to). I proposed to my mentor teacher showing the kids the documentary Precious Knowledge, which would be a way to talk about Latino culture here in the U.S. as well as opening up a dialogue about educational inequality. As the majority of my students are African American, I thought it would naturally open up a dialogue about, say, the case in Ann Arbor and, a decade later, the case in Oakland, CA, of school districts "teaching ebonics" (that's how I understood the controversy, at least, until I actually started researching it). My mentor teacher was unsurprisingly absolutely opposed to opening this dialogue and she assured me that I myself wouldn't be the least bit prepared to deal with the consequences. About which she is not entirely incorrect. So I wrote to S asking for her advice as to how to plan a unit like this, what to expect, and how to deal with whatever consequences as well as how to convince J and the administration that this is a worthwhile activity. I told J that we could leave at that, for now, and that I'd come at her with a firm plan later, which she could then evaluate again.

In terms of intellectual character, okay. So in October, the students watched some antiquated video about the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico. Later, they had to answer the question (in Spanish): "What do Mexican children have no fear of?" The answer? "Death." It is exactly this kind of thing that I want to teach my kids to be critical of. Because, first of all: No Mexican children are afraid of death? And what about American children--don't they celebrate something very similar to Day of the Dead (Halloween)? Why would they then be so afraid of death. Just stupid.

I even want students to be skeptical of me and my supposed authority when it comes to teaching them about culture. I mean, on the one hand, I have a knowledge base that I can certainly share with them. Yet I think it's totally appropriate that they realize that I'm not a native Spanish speaker, that my culture is not a Latino culture. And that, furthermore, this idea of "Latino culture" is problematic in itself, because the Spanish speaking world is huge and is comprised of a multitude of cultures. I mean, i want students to learn about those cultures and to explore them. But I want them to be skeptical of the idea of "Latino culture" in general.

The situation in my placement is difficult at times, because my philosophy (which I am so thrilled to be able to articulate) is so very different of that of my mentor teachers...yet I also recognize that I'm also a student, I'm also learning, and that I have a lot of room to grow. It's hard sometimes to be in a space where I disagree so vehemently with her approach while at the same time acknowledging my own need for growth and direction.

Having said that, we have our good days, and am generally able to be respectful and earnest with her in a way that has led to her giving me more freedom than I initially expected I'd have with her.

And as for the students, I am sooooo excited to start with them again on Monday. Every morning I wake up excited to see them, and I realize that I am in the right profession, and that is an amazing feeling.

I remain so grateful to get to work with this amazing kids.

What keeps me going

Our school has this 3-minute (more like 30 minute) club where we meet every two weeks to talk about a book all the teachers are reading (theoretically, at least), or to talk around some theme. The theme today was, "What keeps you going and keeps you inspired to do your job?" It didn't start off promisingly when the first teacher offered, "My paycheck."

Yet today was an amazing day! Magical! I left the school exhausted (that's my natural state this semester, it seems) but absolutely exhilarated. I had learned new things about two of my favorite students, things that I felt honored they'd shared with me; I tutored some kids during our school's "flex" period and worked with one girl who had all these lightbulbs going off and I told her, "B, there is no reason why you can't be doing better in this class than an E. I know you can do this." She nodded in this quiet, pleased little way and said she agreed. It was lovely. Then I thought of an activity to do with the kids to reinforce reflexive verbs and it went as well as I hoped it would (which I know well from experience now that that's not always the case!). I had kids who are never engaged making connections and getting up and moving around and GETTING it! It was amazing. Finally, I had some pretty deep conversations with my 6th hour. They had some great questions about Spanish grammar, really insightful ones, and then they were asking me what language I thought in (so cute! I assured them that I think in English, but that sometimes I think in Spanish, especially if I'm thinking of something I'm going to say in Spanish, because we are a bilingual household. Then they asked if my kids spoke/understood both languages so we talked a bit about that. They just happened to see pictures of my kids on my computer when I was doing a Power Point presentation last week [aside: I played them a video of a song about reflexive verbs that was really clever and was to the tune of "Dance with Me" by Justin Timberlake which they loved]--they had no idea that I had kids and couldn't believe it! So we are really getting to know each other!). I have one student, A, who always translates what I say for her classmates who complain when I speak Spanish and say, "Can you say that again IN ENGLISH, please?" Today she was asking all sorts of incredible questions, and after class I said to her, "A, you've got the bug! You love languages, and you need to keep studying this!" She was all bright-eyed and agreed enthusiastically.

Our Chinese exchange students are in the class now and my student Aw proudly introduced me to his exchange student because he knew I speak Chinese. I spoke with the exchange student, who was really excited that I spoke Chinese for me, although it was surreal for me, speaking Chinese with a Chinese student in Spanish class. J was really tickled and she asked me to tell the class how to say "Hola" in Chinese so all the class could greet our new student. I kept thinking about him, and what a crazy experience it must be for him and the other students to have landed here in Redford. What a different world, a different culture, they are experiencing!

I was able to go around and help a lot of students today when they were working on some translations. In my classes, there is a very significant minority of students who JUST DON'T CARE. I don't know what to do with them. They don't care about their grades, so I can't threaten them or persuade them with that. What can I do? I think a lot about what we have talked about in Ed Psych and how important it is to BELIEVE that all students are smart (I almost want to put that word in quotes--it's so problematic!), and I am amazed at the power of doing that. A is this incredibly charming boy with dark, shining eyes and short cornrows. C is another boy, he is quiet but totally disengaged and when I talk to him he avoids my gaze. A and C were sitting together today, avoiding doing their work and I went up to them and said, "Chicos, cómo les va?" clapping my hands. A kind of did his smirk at me and was like, "Yeah, yeah, we workin', we workin'!" I asked where their books were, where their vocab lists were and I stayed with them till they got it all out. Then I went through the steps with them and didn't let up. I'd ask them a question. Who is the subject here? Who is doing the action? And I'd wait. And they got it all! It was incredible. My mentor had said to me about them, "I don't like to use the word worthless, but..." But they were getting it! They don't care, and they don't try, but it isn't because they are dumb or worthless.

So why is it? I think about that a lot now with the students I'm teaching. I feel like they don't know how to "do" school. I feel like school has never done anything for them. I want them to own their voice and feel empowered, but sometimes I feel at a loss as to how to do that. I asked them for some feedback on what we could do to help them review. I got some really, really crappy, thoughtless answers (and some good ones!). I wrote each student back and told them I wanted more information, I wanted them to be more specific. I tried to be very explicit about what I was looking for. What does this "go over a worksheet" look like for you? HOW do you think playing Jeopardy will help you? I told them that I really wanted to know what they thought. They seemed to feel like I was just asking them to jump through another pointless hoop. I want to break them of that mentality!

I know that metacognition is the buzzword of this program, but I don't think I realized how difficult that is for kids who aren't used to thinking like that. One thing I want to work with my students on when the semester begins--and when I have my own class someday--is teaching them skills to document and take responsibility for their own learning. I want them to be able to critique their own work and give me evidence for the critiques that they make. We talked today in seminar about how we realize that not all of our students are going to end up falling in love with our subject. Many of them are not going to get a good grade. But I don't really care about grades. I want my students to improve. More basically than that, I want my room to be a safe space for them, and for them to feel like there is someone who believes in them and believes they are worth something, even if they don't do well in my class.

But failure is NOT an option. I'm trying so hard to ride all my students. It's *exhausting*, though. I feel like as soon as I stop hounding them, they are going back to goofing off or not doing their work. But what's the alternative? I won't give up on them. I won't think of my job as merely a paycheck. Not this job.

I ended the day with D, a special ed student who tries so hard and who I never feel like I do enough for. I am going to talk with the special ed teacher who he is assigned to about ways I can help him. My heart breaks when he sits there, needing help and I just can't spend all hour with him. I need ideas. He wrote to me on his feedback sheet that he liked the graphic organizer review we did because, "it was helpful to learn and I didn't get in any trouble." !!! That killed me. We worked together after school. I read to him a short dialogue and, by god, he understand quite a bit of what I was saying. I smiled at him and said. "D? Do you realize that I'm reading to you in Spanish and that you are understanding me?" A big grin spread across his face and he was like, "Yeah." I told him I was really proud of him and his effort and that I hoped he was proud of himself, too. He got a B on his test, and he was tickled.

I'm finding that actually teaching now, actually being in the classroom, is causing me to confront some of my philosophies of teaching and learning. For instance, I felt really adamant that having to sign kids bathroom passes and stuff like that was demeaning and inhuman. If a kid (a young adult!) needs to go to the bathroom, I thought, they are mature enough to decide that for themselves. They don't need to grovel to me for permission. Then, last week, the kids had 10 minutes before the test to look over their notes and prepare. In two separate classes, two separate kids (A.x, who is a riot: this funny, nervous, chatty boy who makes me happy when he walks into the room but who is not a very motivated student and C, a funny, charming but totally disengaged boy) wasted the whole ten minutes talking and goofing around and then, right when I was passing out tests and going to give the listening part asked if they could go to the bathroom. And you know what I said? I said, "Are you KIDDING me?! You just had ten minutes to work or go to bathroom and you spent the whole time goofing off and now you want to go to the bathroom?!"

Today was a good day because I got to work with amazing kids, and I got to hear their stories, and I got to see their lightbulbs go off, and I got to share stuff about me with them and they cared and they were interested, and I got to joke around with my students, and I got to help them and watch them grow. Working with them is such an incredible privilege, and I try every day to take it seriously and honor them and the privilege that is getting to work with them.

They are what keeps me at this.

New Years Smesolutions

This year, I wanted to blog more. And journal! And read for pleasure. Those were some of my resolutions. I also wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour. This year, maybe it will happen. But in the next three months? Grad school is laughing right in the face of all my resolutions. (And it has bad breath).

I have started student teaching full time and it's exciting, exhilarating and overwhelming. Every hour is filled with a million and one decisions to make and I find myself wishing I could just pause everything and have a good think.

When half the kids are all wandering aimlessly around the room as I'm teaching, what do I do? It sounds like a simple answer, but I wonder, on a deeper level, how fair it is to expect them to respect me and the institution of school itself when they haven't been respected or challenged? I want to interest them and challenge them and to empower them. But how do I even begin to do that when I can't get them to sit down?

SL had her head down all hour, I asked her if she was okay and she said no, I asked her if she wanted to go to the office if she wasn't feeling well and she said no. I had to teach so I didn't know what else to do, then. How do you address something like that in the middle of class?

NH went and wrote on the board, "La profesora is muy bonita." which I initially ignored and then he went and wrote on the board (when he was supposed to be working! It's a madhouse in there...) "LOOK OVER YON -->" pointing to what he'd originally wrote. I said, Hey, N, that's very sweet but you're not getting any extra credit or anything and you're supposed to be working right now so please take your seat." But then I forgot to erase it!

I've got a hand full of kids who seem perpetually annoyed at the slow pace of the class and their fellow classmates, and another hand full who never seem to be caught up. We are in desperate need of some differentiation, but I'm finding it a challenge to think of ways to do that with the curriculum that we have. This is definitely an area I want to explore and be more educated about.

I'm also so tired and I miss my man, my friends, my family and MY CHILDREN. There are days that I don't see them at all. That is really hard, and I get emotional sometimes. But as M reminded me (us) recently--it's just a few short months and then we'll be TEACHERS. And we'll have the same schedule as our children for the rest of their school careers.

Also, my daughter watched me editing a video I was doing last semester and she was transfixed. When she sighed, "Mommy, I want to be a teacher just like you..." that reminded me that this is all worth it.

I don't want at all to give the impression that I'm not enjoying this, because the truth is that I'm loving it! I'm absolutely crazy about the kids, am learning so much about them, and I am really enjoying how our relationships are developing.

I also am finding that this experience is putting me face to face with my personal philosophy of teaching and learning, and causing me to think about exactly how that philosophy plays out in the classroom. I have done a lot of work around thinking about myself as a teacher (in my methods class in particular, but also just in general this year), but I'm finally confronting those ideals on the ground, as it were, and thinking about what it means to live those ideals in the classroom.

I do indeed hope to keep blogging as a way of reflecting on the endlessly unfolding experiences of this year (the beginning of what I hope is a long lifetime of teaching experiences!).