Things I have learned and not learned.....

I am learning so much about teaching and what works with 7th graders. Contrary to popular belief they don't teach you everything in your college curriculum.

Things I have learned:
1) Raising your voice is not effective:
They get this enough, it's almost like they are immune to it.
2) It's important to do non-teachery things when your not at school:
School cannot consume my life, if it does I won't be effective as a teacher
3) Document everything:
parents will want to know, students will want to know, administration will want to know, and you will want to know just exactly what did happen two weeks ago.
4) Students will tell you anything:
They don't have censor. Some things they tell you they don't know it is out of the ordinary from another family. Or if they do know, they don't care
5)I am blessed to teach at TMS:
It's a great school and a great district. The faculty staff and students at TMS are all wonderful and wonderful...is there another word for wonderful?

Things I haven't learned:
1) How to control talking...raising my voice doesn't work
2) How to show love, God's love, to these babies:
and yes they are still babies. I have to be assertive and structured. I can't be their friend. I have to be an authority figure. I want to show them Jesus.
3)How to balance administrative things like grades, parents, etc. with my actual teaching and classroom things.

FUNNY STORY:
I was sitting at the lunch table with other teachers. The teacher sitting next to me says "Did you see that?" Four of my students had just toasted with their milk cartons. PRECIOUS!! See they are still.....babies. Precious babies!

MoW

1/7 rough....real rough

1/7 of my day was really rough. The kind of rough where I questioned whether or not I wanted to return tomorrow.

I quickly made the decision that I would, of course.

It was only 1/7. That one period was horrible. I was just as horrible as the kids. I raised my voice. Multiple, multiple times.

The precious souls could not, I mean COULD NOT, keep their mouth shut. I believe at one point I said. "I don't think if I offered y'all 1 million dollars you would keep you mouths shut"

It was horrible, but it was only 1/7 of my day.

The other 6/7 were great! Really great actually.

As mentioned in may other post in my personal blog. Teaching is my calling. The Lord has really been speaking to me about using that ministry and loving the kids. I feel like alot of this comes with patients. For 1/7 of my day my patients was shot, those kids did not feel loved.

To be honest love did not come to mind when I thought about them, and it still doesn't.

So, I ask that you pray for me as I attempt to impact these kids in for eternity. They did not teach me that in any of my Methods classes. There aren't any books written on it.

I truly believe this(learning to love and educate, while impacting) will come from the Lord.

Especially remember my students and I during the 50 minutes between 2:25 and 3:15.

MoW

Open house and the first day of school

Whew...things are going well. I have not had a melt down yet. This is a big deal in my opinion. I will celebrate the small victories.

I will start with open house. My open house hours were 9-12 and 3-6. This made for a VERY long day, but it was so worth it!

I enjoyed getting to meet my kids parents. Most of them could tell that I was a new teacher, but surprisingly I didn't feel like they were alarmed. One parent even said: "I can tell you are new, because you have such high energy!" That made me feel great!

Another very sweet parent also told me that she was praying for me. She did not say this in a "you are going to die" kinda of way. She said it in a sweet meaningful way.

I proceeded to tell her how much I appreciated her prayers and that I go to the Lord in prayer every morning before I enter the school.

I use the last 10 minutes of my drive to prepare my self for the school day. So far so good. God is good!

Now on to the first day of school. It was good, not chaotic like teachers had told me it would be.

In case you don't know teachers can be negative. I, and my other new teachers, have made a vow not to be negative. So far so good. One of these new teachers came down the hall crying on the second day of school and she was still positive after school. SUCCESS!

OK, the students were really sweet on the first day. Bless my 2nd periods (first period of the day, 1st period is my planning) they take the brunt of all the technology difficulties. They are for real troopers!

On the first day I felt like the things I was doing were sorta boring and a little bit meaningless, but they weren't and the kids were fine. I felt sorta lost or *insert the word i can't think of here* all day.

Second day was much better! I felt like the students were way more engaged and un-bored than on the first day.

I must say that I have a GREAT mentor teacher. She has been wonderful and helped me through the first two days. SO THANKFUL for her!

See you soon, with more fun stories of my first year of teaching!

MoW

My journey so far...

I have accepted a job at the Tupelo School District.

Let me be honest with you. This district is the cream of the crop. There ain't no gettin' around it!

I am happy to be a part of it.

I will be teaching ICT I. ICT I is a 7th grade computer class. In this class I will teach keyboarding, word processing, etc. Just the basics.

Here is my time line so far:

July 14: interview and offered the job in the interview.
July 15: accept the job.
July 18: get a call saying I need to go to a new teacher training tomorrow
July 19: new teacher training. I met great new friends!
July 20: new teacher training. I got to know my new friends and about whole brain teaching...Google it, it's awesome. I am praying for the confidence to use it!
July 21: back at my summer job. My last day will be the 29th. I am sad, but excited to start this new adventure.

I will keep you updated on my adventures!

NEXT POST: My classroom!