I had a wonderful student teaching experience back in the day. I had an awesome CT, and my university supervisor turned out to be better than expected. I got some great constructive feedback. For the most part, I knew when a lesson didn’t go well. What I didn’t know (and still don’t always know) is where exactly the lesson went wrong or what I could change. When we sat down to discuss it, my CT didn’t spend a lot of time telling me what I did wrong. In fact, she rarely ever did. Luckily, I didn’t have too many really off lessons, and when I did, she saw that I knew it. She let me lead and then would help me think of a few realistic ways I could fix what I needed to be fixed. She was also really awesome at telling me what I was excelling at. I left my student teaching experience feeling confident and  (realistically 😉 ) ready to take over my own class.

I have yet to feel that same confidence. If I do hear anything back from any observations, it’s something that I did wrong. And this will sound really defensive, but usually, it’ll be that I should have done X or Y. And… I have usually done X or Y, it just happened about five minutes after the observer left. So, it’s not really feedback I can use…

Well, today a colleague stopped by my room. I have a lot of kids she taught a few years ago so she wanted to stay a minute and just watch them. I started a mini-lesson with them, and I have to say these kids usually leave me feeling frazzled. They are very high energy and all over the place, so they typically take a lot of energy from me!

After school, she stopped by to tell me how impressed she was with what she saw. She enjoyed the depth of the discussion, and how I didn’t stop the kids when I didn’t get the “correct” answer. I let them explain their thinking, and she kind of changed her mind to agree with them.

This moment has really helped give me even more motivation to listen to what I’m saying to others more. I’m trying to point out the really awesome things I see and hear my kids doing, and I need to make sure to continue to do that AND do the same for the adults I work with.

It is crazy what a few nice words can do for your day!

I’ve been wondering a lot about why I can’t seem to get myself on a schedule. During my final few years of undergrad I started getting myself into a schedule of the things that needed to be done (except the whole schoolwork thing, which got done right before it needed to be. Oops). Grad school was even better (except for the schoolwork again, ha).

I was watching TV, and as I started looking around the room I was in, I wondered why on earth I can’t seem to get myself into any type of routine or schedule. And then it hit me- there aren’t really any consequences I (apparently) care enough about to make me change my ways. For example, when I was in school, I had to use the laundry facility. There were many popular times where I ended up having to wait it out for way longer than I cared to a few too many times. I discovered that if I went in at about 7:30-8 on Sunday mornings, I’d never have to wait. I could get all my laundry done, get to the school gym as it opened (wouldn’t have to wait for equipment!), shower, get brunch, and then I had the whole rest of the day to do whatever it was I needed. If I did laundry, I put it away because I basically just lived in a room and I needed things in their place if I wanted to be able to move around.

Now, I live in a place that has more than one room :), I have my own kitchen and cooking materials and my own washer and dryer and so on. If I don’t put my clothes away for a few weeks, I can put them in my bedroom and close the door. If I don’t feel like cleaning my kitchen right now, who cares? I live alone. 

The problem is, I’m more stressed out than I need to be. I have to dig through a pile of clothes to figure out an outfit. I have to stop and wash dishes so I can finish cooking the meal I’m in the middle of.

I’m glad I had that moment of clarity, and I hope I can use this info about myself to make some changes that will help me let go of some of my self-induced stress out of my life. There’s enough stress in this world without me creating my own. 🙂

So I have had a lot of little moments, slices of life, reminding me that I need to make a change, and they come up again and again and again… And then I am faced with the reality that for some reason, I cannot seem to make a decision to save my life. BUT BUT BUT…

…I need to. There are many things I am not happy with or crazy about regarding my life right now, and there is a decent amount of those things that I can choose to make better, if I would just act on it or make some changes myself. I think I’m finally getting fed up enough with myself that I am going to really make an effort to start making some of those changes.