Well, proceed at your own risk. Who knows? You may get a few laughs at least.
On a serious note, I am very passionate about my job. After four wonderful years of teaching English, I am switching gears and will be teaching Health and Keystone this year. I could not be more excited. I get to teach the classes where the content is relationships. You know that dream class, where all students have amazing relationships, treat each other and you with respect, and you all leave the school year a little bit sad because you did, in fact, become a family? I love those classes, but I only get one, maybe two, of those classes a year...and that's if I'm lucky. Now, I get to facilitate classes where that is the expectation for each class, not just one or two. And it's my content!!! Maybe I'm being a little idealistic, but that's what the curriculum says I'm supposed to do...and "they" have even sent me to amazing trainings where I got to learn games and trust building activities I can do with my kids. Stick around...I'm sure you will get some laughs at my expense in that area for sure.
Also, I am an assistant coach for our high school girls' volleyball team. This is the part of my job that I have always wanted to do...since I started playing volleyball when I was eleven...I promise, I always knew this was what I wanted to do. The teaching part came about because I didn't figure I'd be able to get a job coaching if I couldn't also teach something. Turns out that you can get a job only coaching, but you can't do it coaching girls' volleyball...not here anyway. Who am I kidding? Not anywhere! Volleyball has always been a passion of mine, partially because of all of the wonderful relationships I got out of playing and being around the sport for so many years. I had always considered myself to be a coach first, and then a teacher...turns out that God leads us to what we are meant to do by way of those things we love to do. I consider myself a teacher-coach (hence, Mrs. Coach, which is the major point of confusion in my classes for the first week of school--which title my should students address me by). I love teaching kids and learning from them, whether that's on the volleyball court or in the classroom.
Further, I was lucky enough this year to be a recipient of what my district calls the "21st Century Grant." This program gives a certain number of teachers in the district a class set of laptops as a learning tool for student use. As grant recipients, we are expected to employ some of the latest and greatest ideas in education: project-based learning, 21st century skills, critical thinking/problem-solving skills, and the like. I say latest, because I'm still relatively new to teaching (this is only year 5 for me). A lot of this stuff has been around for a while, but for some reason, we are told that it's new...yea, and in 30 years, we'll see it again, but it will be called something else, right?
At the risk of boring you to tears on my first post, let me sum this up. I don't believe that I'm some amazing teacher who has infinite wisdom to share with the world. That's not why I'm blogging. I'm choosing to start a blog on these topics because I don't know everything. In fact, there is very little I do know...I'm learning every day from you and people like you. I love to read, learn, and try new things in class in order to become a better teacher, and ultimately, to help our students become better people and citizens...just like you do. I want to learn from you, share the things you know with others, and if I do happen upon some original ideas of my own, I'll share them here. Major points of interest for me include the following:
- teaching/coaching generation iY
- educational technology
- project-based learning
- health and wellness
- trust/team-building
- student collaboration
- leadership
- professional learning communities
I plan to post regularly (for me, that means weekly), but I won't fight it if the mood strikes more often than that. Feel free to comment, post links, or just laugh at/with me. Welcome!!
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