Take a Deep Breath

Everything will go wrong.

The wrinkles around your eyes

are only going to crease deeper into your skin.

Your neighbor is a criminal.

The lavender that you’re trying to grow

to ease your stress level is going to rot from being over watered.

You never really had a green thumb anyway.

Your spouse will leave you and take

everything and you are forced to file bankruptcy.

No matter how many meditation classes you attend,

how many breathing exercises,

you are at death’s door.

You will lose all confidence in yourself and become a hermit.

Your mom’s health will go south and your dad

will soon follow.

You know other people’s problems may be worse than yours,

but you are still devastated.

You get in your car after leaving the windows open, close the windows,

turn on the air conditioning and then discover

there is a gigantic wasp flying around the inside of your car.

While she fans her hand frantically in the air

to say farewell  to the wasp, she gets a whiff of lavender.

She closes her eyes. Inhale… exhale.

Your head abruptly flies forward and then back,

whipping violently at your neck.

Your student had backed forcefully into your car.

Count your breaths, stick with what you can remember

and lavender away.

The Big Day

t-5.

Every day was a big day, but today was DEFINITELY a big day. I was going to have the classroom to myself, and that idea alone sounded awesome.

“Everything is going to be perfect!” I reminded myself as I sat in the teacher’s seat staring at the empty desks in the classroom. 

t-0.

The bell rung. I stood outside the classroom greeting each and every one of my students like every other day. But they quickly noticed the missing piece of the puzzle –their classroom teacher was indeed gone. 

Students worked independently on a research project, but things weren’t going as planned.

“This is definitely not perfect!” I screamed at myself as students kept on chattering with one another, climbing out of their seats to tango their way to a friend, and asking questions to things that had already been discussed. I had lost control. 

The classroom froze. 

Jessica and Maddie are giggling like the ladies in a tea commercial. Blake and Jacob are fighting over the dry erase spray bottle. While in my mind I realized something that was going to change everything. I realized that perfection did not exist. I realized that precision couldn’t exist in the classroom. I was so used to planning out and imagining every moment of class, forgetting that teaching requires improvising and adapting to changes. I just needed to remind myself that everything was going to be okay.

And they unfroze.

Staying Humble and Remembering to Laugh

As I browsed through Google I decided to research the things teachers need to know and I realized the importance of teaching procedures. During core one, my professor stressed over the importance of procedures and now I know why. Little things that we as future educators don’t think about are these itty-bitty procedures that can transform the classroom into a much more enjoyable classroom.

In a blog post that I read titled “Love, Teach: The Top Ten Things I Wish I'd Known as a First-Year Teacher,” Love Teach utilizes Harry Wong’s methods of The First Days of School and states:

“First, you need to figure out exactly how you want everything done. What do I mean by everything? The way students enter and exit, when they can sharpen pencils, if and how they will borrow pencils from you, what heading they will use on their papers, what to do when a visitor walks in, how to ask to go to the bathroom, how you will get their attention quickly, how students will pass in papers, how to work in groups, how to demonstrate active listening, etc. Then, have students practice these procedures until they are not just ok, but perfect.  This can take anywhere from 1-3 weeks” (1).

It is important to make a list of all the procedures that you need students to perfect so that any future instruction could work out more smoothly and your flow of teaching won’t be interrupted. Creating a list of procedures that you need for students to perfect is also helpful because it gets you thinking about your classroom, how you want it run and envisioning is key.

            Love Teach ends her blog post on “The Top Ten Things I Wish I'd Known as a First-Year Teacher” by reminding soon-to-be-teachers that being able to laugh at yourself is part of the job. “Humility, a sense of humor, and a pack of people who love you are your best weapons for getting through and doing it gracefully” (Love Teach 1). Laughing at yourself helps remind us that we are part of the learning process and that it’s perfectly fine to laugh it off.

Works Cited

Love Teach. "Love, Teach: The Top Ten Things I Wish I'd Known as a First-Year Teacher." Love, Teach. N.p., 14 May 2013. Web. 04 Nov. 2015. <http://www.loveteachblog.com/2013/05/the-top-ten-things-i-wish-id-known-as.html>.

KATE Conference: Learning about Graphic Learning

Attending the KATE conference for the first time was nerve-racking, but the longer I stayed for presentations the more inspired I got.  I attended many sessions, but one that I would like to share as it has instilled many different ideas in me was a presentation over graphic learning.  Many believe in graphic learning and swear by it as others believe that it does not contain enough literature and is not an effective way of reading. In this presentation however, it was clear that learning through the use of images is an effective method of learning for students.

            Our presenter, Kelly Connelly started out by discussing the many instances where her students who have never touched a book voluntarily would reach toward a novel like The Odyssey; they would finish it in one day, and would inspire several other students to do the same.  When students are reading graphic novels, they are reading: word choice, syntax, length of the sentence, flow of ideas, shapes, the size of shapes, characters, and texts, colors, shading, placement, where the text is placed, characters itself, and the size of the overall picture. Students are looking at many different elements when they are reading graphic novels, and it also helps students who have a hard time visualizing the text. Being able to picture what is being read is a skill, and utilizing graphic novels can teach students how important this skill is.

            If teachers don’t have time to teach a graphic novel, graphic learning could be taught through excerpts as well. Students can practice graphic learning by taking a given word and the depicting it through a drawing. Teachers can also have students look at a small part of a text and then allow students to circle the words that stood out and brought strength to the text. Then show an image that modeled the small excerpt and discuss with students to see whether or not their circled words were depicted in the image. An example that Connelly recommended others use was an excerpt from The Odyssey where Cyclops lost his eye. It is a passage packed with numerous amounts of sensory details that could be visualized.

            It is important to give the students a chance to read what they enjoy reading, and graphic novels is one of them. Attending this session over graphic learning has not only taught me the many tips of tricks to teach graphic learning, but it has become something that I want to protect and keep around for my students. I want graphic novels to be kept around for my students, especially those who struggle with reading comprehension.

            The KATE conference was such an amazing and moving event. I definitely look forward to what the next conference has to offer.

A Letter to Myself

Dear my future self,

If you’re ever stuck, stressed, or questioning that what you’re doing is right for you, remember the moments that matter:

Remember that time when you couldn’t make it to class and students wondered where you were because they missed you.

Remember that in your classroom, sits the next and future doctor, astronaut, scientist, educator, and people who aspire to be better.

Remember that time when Student A came up to you, excited and eager about your lesson, because it made an impact.

Remember that kids who need the most love are the ones who ask in the most unloving ways.

It is tough, but what you do is beyond a simple paycheck, because you hold a piece of the future. Keep calm and smile on.

Love,
Yourself