Breathe (Online Reflection #6)

Overwhelming.

If I could sum up my student teaching experience with one word that would be it. At times I felt so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even take a breath. Other times were like a breeze, and I wish I had been able to fully appreciate and reside in the moment.

Sometimes I lay awake in bed hours past when I should have been sleeping. My brain has a hard time shutting itself off, and I’ve had a lot to think about this past year. There were times I found myself crying, and I didn’t know why. There were other times where all I could focus on was my excitement for the future.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would want to tell myself if I was to start this journey again, and I hope that any future teaching intern that reads this can benefit from this list to my past self as well.

From Learning (Online Reflection #5)

From Learning

From learning comes

this great fountain of knowledge

I’ve gained along the way

at Wichita State and East High with

rooms filled with knowledge.

Finding Universal Strategies (Online Reflection #4)

It never fails to impress me when somebody knows more than one language. I tried in vain for years to learn Spanish, and for some reason, it just never clicked. This is why when I look at the English Language Learners (ELL) in my classroom, I know that they are capable of so much. Randy Bomer points out that not everyone believes this is the case: “Unfortunately, educators too often tend to see students who speak languages other than English as their first language as deprived rather than rich, as problems to fix rather than resources to draw upon” (41). I never want to look at any of my students as “problems,” and this is why I think learning how best to assist ELL students is so important.