| | It is officially past the middle of the semester. I have purposefully avoided this blog. To say the least, I've been going through a rough patch. For the past month or two I've been at an all time low in self-esteem, which is so atypical for me. If there has been one thing in my life I've always wanted to do it's teaching. I interned in kindergarten last semester, then worked with 1st-2nd graders this summer and now I've leaped over to 5th grade. For awhile I thought I was going nowhere with a CT who wasn't fitting me at all. I should tell you about her. Linda is a great teacher in many ways, and of course there a few things I don't like, but there are many things I do like. She is a bit messy, but I don't mind, I'm flexible. Also, she tends to be so busy she fogets that I need to do lessons and we never have time to plan for them so I can't do my plan until the last minute. The good: She is great at motivating students and she has the best intentions. Also, she always tries to help her students as much as possible, even if it means she has to give up her evenings to stay late tutoring.
What I've been depressed about is my effectiveness as a teacher, BUT luckily I had my mid-semester meeting the other day with my facilitator Katie. She is so terrific and encouraging and it was exactly what I needed. I was definitely on the verge of tears a few times during that meeting, but I held my emotions together and listened and tried my best to grow as a person from the advice they gave me. One of my goals is to notice my strengths more, because I would never think of those (because the only ones I know are patience and listening) so I'd focus my attention on areas for improvement, which I thought of too many. Anyways, now I have a ton of strengths to think about and I feel like I'm on the right path again.
The only concern I have now is where I'll be in the next few months. My CT is very centered on TAKS (one thing I don't want to focus all of my attention on as a teacher) and she's unsure how to keep me in her room next semester. I really want to stay because I love love the kids. They are great and amazing and such good kids. I've learned so much from them and they always make me happy to be there. Some of them have had scary lives, and some have had lives much different than mine (farms for examples) and then some I feel like I probably would have been best friends with if they had been in 5th grade with me. The dynamics are so different in the room and I see so many of them are stuck on emotions that they are trying to explore (like sadness and anger from parental divorce for one of my girls). I want to work with them and grow with them and see them succeed all the way to the end and te fact that they keep asking me when my last day is, I can never give them a straight answer because I don't know. I finally talked to Bonnie about it today and she said she's going to talk to her asap. If I don't stay at Galindo next semester I might be in Jollyville (faaar) or another school in Austin the Bonnie's been talking to. Bonnie kinda scared me today by telling me that Linda had worked with one student before who absolutely hated her. She explained that student was super anal-organized so Linda was a bad match....then I wondered if Bonnie ever considered if I was organized when pairing me with Linda or just matched me with her. Either way, it doesn't matter because I'm not that concerned with Linda's structure because I know she does whatever works best for her.
So, I feel better now. I also have a Reading buddy that's part of the reading requirement of the pds. He's a pretty cool kid. He doesn't show his emotions a lot except for content and sleepy, but he's so easygoing and I show lots of emotion to compensate. I was stressed for a long time because I thought I wasn't going to be able to help him with his reading (especially after finding out he failed his TAKS benchmark earlier this year) but I've been seeing some great improvements lately. He's been reading with expression now and he is starting to comprehend more and started doing more readerly behaviors. I wonder who he worked with last year, because he only did one reading performance and I'm glad I've had him do two already because his confidence has risen already. He makes me proud indeed. He's got a long way to go, but I think he's getting better by the day :)
Finally (this post is long because so much has happened!) for one class we have children's books reading clubs and my book is The Tale of Desperaux and I must say: fantastic! I've read DiCamillo's other book, Because of Winn Dixie, and that one was a bore. Desperaux is so different and so well articulated. The themes, the style of writing, the word choice are all amazing. I'm so glad to be reading it and I highly recommend it to all. I also bought a bunch of books for my classroom library a week ago so now I'm up to about 20 books, which is like a fifth of the number my CT has. I think for my birthday and graduation I'm going to ask for kids books and professional books and materials (since all of that can be expensive). And maybe a gift card for a clothing store that would have lots of goo teacher clothes, which I feel I'm lacking.
Okay I've got a lot of reading and hw ahead of me. Life outside of school consists of work. People try to get me to do other thing, but I really have no room. It's such a busy semester oof!
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| | Posted 11/3/2008 10:24 PM - 5 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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