Despite the fact that every other teacher I know had today for President's Day and I didn't, it was still one of the rosiest days I've had teaching so far!
Rose #1: My first class of the day did something amazing. We did our weekly journal activity and then they took a quiz. After, we graded the quiz, and then I gave them the work they needed to finish before our next class (reading another chapter in Lord of the Flies and doing the vocabulary for the next chapter). Amazingly enough, my students go to to work and they were SILENT. I was absolutely amazed at the way they just sort of took the initiative to figure out what order they wanted to do the assignments in and if they wanted to do vocabulary on the computer or use a dictionary. They worked right up until the end of class and I was just so impressed and happy!
Rose #2: Remember the great poems my kids wrote last week? Today I asked them to read the poems to the rest of the class. I didn't even give them the warning about how difficult it is for some people to read their writing in front of others, and how inappropriate it would be for them to laugh or make fun of someone's poem or reading. They managed to handle the whole thing very, very maturely. On top of that, my student with autism didn't want to read his poem. Another student in class encouraged him, telling him she saw his poem and it was really good. Then another student offered to read it for him. This surprised me for two reasons: the student who volunteered to read the poem isn't the nicest boy, and I was shocked that the boy with autism was willing to let him read the poem for him. I was so, so nervous that the reader was going to make fun of the boy, but I just took a deep breath and crossed my fingers and sent up a little prayer. He did an absolutely fantastic job. At the end, my students were all so kind and polite. I was really, really proud of them.
Rose #3: Today we talked about poetry & structure in my 9th grade class. The students were so excited about concrete poetry. Poetry is really not my favorite subject at all, but their enthusiasm today re-energized me to keep teaching the unit and to keep trying new things.
I hope you stopped to smell the roses today.
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Tori- I didn't know you were writing a blog until I stumbled across it on Facebook. I really like your idea of "roses" :o) And you are totally right- it does inspire other teachers to hope that they can have some "rose moments". While I'm not in a good spot yet to actually notice my "rose moments" I hope that by next year I can get my teaching style and curriculum under control enough to start seeing the brighter side of things. Your blog just showed me that it's possible to have "rose moments" eventually. What a great birthday present to me from you (and I bet you never thought a simple FB post would turn into a birthday present!)-- SMelissa :o)
ReplyDeleteTori J. Oxley- I did NOT know you had a blog! I do too... when I have time to post. Stop by for a read, but don't judge my lack of editing :) Hope all is well! Miss you!
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