Moving Forward

It’s been a while since my last blog update but somehow life got a little crazy and this kept being pushed back on my list of things to do. So much has happened in my life since I last wrote. My family and I suffered a loss of my sweet Grandmother. The Holiday’s flew by with lots of food and family time and I have now started teaching my 7^th nine -week term.

When my Grandmother (Meme) passed away I didn’t quite know how to deal with all my sadness. It is hard to be so far away from my family at time when I just wanted to be close to them. I have to put on a “happy face” for my students and I must continue to live my life. I still struggle with moments of sadness and anger that when I do get to go home she will not be there for me to visit with. 1 Corinthians 13:7 has been a verse that I have turned to lately “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

When it comes to teaching I am continually pushing myself to find ways to make my content relevant to my students. It’s hard because just when I have finally established some rapport with my students and developed meaningful relationships with them my 9 or 18 weeks with them is suddenly brought to and I start the entire process over with a set of completely new students. I am both excited to receive new students but left with a feeling of what could I have accomplished if I had only had my old students for 18 more weeks. What kind of impact could I have made?

So, I re-prioritize. I establish some new classroom expectations for my students and new goals for myself. I update my syllabus and set some higher classroom expectations and I take on the task of learning 150+ new names and faces.

This term we are focusing on developing their writing skills. I want them to be able to formulate an opinion and then be able to legitimately support that opinion through writing. This means a lot of extra grading on my part but this is a skill that will help them not only in their other classes but also in life.