that "right" feeling

Well, many things are continuing to keep me busy and everyday I feel blessed to have this wonderful life I live. (Are you tired of hearing that yet?? Sorry, I just can't get over it!) I have many things I could blog about but tonight I escpecially want to blog about that "right" feeling I had.

As many of you know, I have been attending school to be an elementary teacher. I will be starting my student teaching in January and graduating in May. Today, I just started my supervised participation. This consist of observing, and participating in the classroom along with teaching a lesson. The classroom teacher I will be working with for the next few weeks was gone today so a substitute was there. But, she was very easy to talk to and I had so much fun! I have many stories I could tell but I especially want to share two!

1) There was a boy in the class that was having a hard time paying attention because the cup of marbles on his desk was too tempting to play with. (Each pod of 4 has a cup and if they are caught doing something good, they are given a marble. The first group to fill their cup gets a prize, which Im not sure what that is yet, I am sure I will find out soon!) I learned in my many classes I have taken that simply walking toward a kid of standing by them can stop their behavior without you even having to open your mouth or call them out in front of the class. At first I wasn't sure if it was my place to correct the behavior of this particular student but the teacher was busy teaching and I couldn't ignore the fact that this student was going to miss out on learning what was a brand new concept. I thought, if he doesn't pay attention now, he wont learn this concept and everything built on top of it will be very confusing and hard for him to learn later on! So, I thought why not try what I have been taught and simply walk over to him. So I did, and...............IT WORKED!! He immediately knew he needed to put the marbles back in the cup and pay attention. So I stood there awhile to see what his reaction would be. Well, a couple minutes later he could not resist the temptation and started playing with his marbles again. So I tried another trick I was taught and simply put my hand on his shoulder and....... IT WORKED AGAIN! I was feeling pretty good, I didn't have to make a scene in front of his classmates and he was paying attention. I stood there awhile and felt he was paying attention so I walked away. After some time, again the boy started playing with his marbles. I waited to see what the teacher would do and she was busy teaching so I decided to walk over to him again, and again he instantly put the marbles in the cup and even placed them on another students desk. I thought I had given him enough nonverbal warnings so I got down on the boys level and whispered that if the marbles continued to be a problem I would have to take them away (having marbles taken out of your cup is not a good thing) (again, not knowing if I should follow through with this if I had to, I was a bit worried) But the boy listened and we didn't have a problem the rest of the class! **Feeling accomplished**

2) There is a little girl who gets picked on from time to time in class. I was only there a day and I could pick up on this fast. So, during writing time the students were asked to write about Halloween, either what they did last year, or what they expect it to be like this year. This little girl says "Well this is going to be fun..... not!" and a little boy says to her "(her name), that wasn't even funny" So the two of them start arguing. Unable to just ignore the behavior once again, I went over and stood between the two of their desks and ask the girl to get her notebook out and start righting like her classmates were doing. She said to me, "I don't have anything to write about" I replied with "You don't have any Halloween stories?" She says "no, not really" I continue with "What about this year? You could write about what you are going to wear and what you hope your night to be like." She continues with, "I don't even know what Im doing tomorrow" So I mentioned "well, what does it look like around your house on Halloween?" She says "the dogs are in the yard, the cars are in the driveway, and we don't have any decorations because the dogs tear them up." Driven to not give up and let this little girl just not write I said "Well there ya go! Write about how you won't find any halloween decorations outside your house because the dogs tear them up!" She continues to say "I dont think that will work, thats boring." I say "Thats not boring, I think thats funny!" She says, "really? Noone thinks Im funny, they all think Im dumb." I encourage her by saying "well I think you can make it a very funny story!" She says "Okay, I will give it a try" and she wrote for the rest of writing time.

I was so happy with how I could help the students today and I just had that exciting feeling like hey this is really what I am supposed to do and I can't wait to get my teaching license! We all have that wonder, is this really what I want to do? Can I be successful at this? Well today I answered those questions.... YES!!!! This is exactly what I want to do and yes, I can be successful!!

I get asked the question, what grade do you want to teach? often and when I respond "the lower grades, Pre-K through first preferably" sometimes I get the answer "Oh, so a glorified babysitter, you're going to be babysitting 25 kids all day". I would like to tell all those people who think I am a licensed glorifed babysitter, No I am not a glorified teacher, I am teaching the first steps of schooling you, your kids, employees, and everyone else need before they can do their job!