I went back to look at the things I had written in the past and thought 2 years was a sufficient amount of time (since I wasn't blogging at all before that time). This is what I found from February 2007:
This past week student teaching was the most interesting yet. I actually fulfilled the long awaited "takeover" of the class on Wednesday. It was a momentous occasion when the students began to ask where the teacher was and when she would be back. The look on their faces was worth every dreadful hour I spent sitting in my chair wondering what I would do differently, given the opportunity. We are still finishing up genetics for the first two days of next week, but then we start space on Wednesday. I am pretty excited to be able to share some of my passion for astronomy with the students. I hope I will be successful in that. It's a tall order since they are just getting used to me, but I'll do my best. It's hard to believe I only have two weeks left there, but it's exciting to think about going to the high school. It is not, however, exciting to think about learning 100 new names of students. Oh well, such is the life of a teacher.I was able to exercise a little of my classroom management techniques on the class this week. It's been interesting to see how these kids react to me versus the normal teacher. My naturally loud voice really gets their attention when I choose to use it. It is usually followed up by "Mr. Bowie, why you yelling at us?" To which I reply, "You guys haven't heard me yell yet!" I try to be light hearted about that even when I feel angry. It's a real trial to not let the kids get the best of me. It's actually much more difficult than I thought it would be.
Stay tuned for updates on how my job search (had an interview this week) is going and how my last two weeks in middle school goes. Thanks for reading.
I remember that time. I was still student teaching and couldn't wait to get in front of a classroom. I thought then that I could do things so much better. While that classroom was peppered with difficult students, I was humbled to be in front them as a leader. It all goes to show education is about relationships and I didn't have a relationship built with them yet. I have worked on building relationships with my current students; I have worked especially hard on that this school year. Its tough, but worth the effort. There are few things in education that are so rewarding as when a student comes to share a personal problem with you or when they ask for a letter of recommendation because they feel you know them better than any other teacher.
I think SNU did another thing well: they taught me to reflect on my past experiences to become a lifelong learner. I hated those reflection papers in the School of Education at SNU, but it is surely helpful at this point in my career. I have, finally, learned reflection as a skill that will help me be better at what I do.
While I am by no means an expert on reflection, blogging is an activity that is very therapeutic for me. Its like going to a counselor. Maybe I should adopt that as my new mantra: "Blogging, cheaper than a psychologyist and just as good"!
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