Wednesday, January 14, 2009

A few minor successes

It's been a while! I've been crazy busy with testing (reading scores went up, math went down), Christmas events (a barely successful attempt at making Chex Mix with the kids in not enough time), and coming back to school without being overwhelmed by life. However, I've been meaning to blog for a while about a few things that have gone right. 

First of all, in December, I was gone for a day at a workshop, and when I returned, a student (who is very respectful, but totally out of seat, talking, etc.) had a note for me. It reads as follows: 
"I will try my best not to give up. Thank you for believing in me, and that I can have a really good success in my life. Instead of giving up, I will try a lot harder. PS: You are the best teacher ever!" :-) Yay, that was nice! This kid still drives me up the wall every day, but bless his heart anyway, right :-)

Then yesterday, earlier in class we had discussed the meaning of the word "opaque" and "transparent." Then later in the day, one of my favorite kids (who never does his work, but listens and participates in discussion) is looking at a page protector that something had come in. He holds it up to his face, attempts to look through, and says, "Hey, this is opaque, right?" Yes! You got it! Somebody is learning something!!

On Monday, the same kid and I were finally sitting down and hammering out some more work on fractions (if I never see another fraction again, it will be too soon!) and he did some good work. This was encouraging. However, then later on, we happened to be in lockdown for two hours and man were the kids bored. So, he finally comes up to me and asks me to write down fraction problems for him because he wanted to keep working!!!! Yay!!! 

So, among all the craziness, good things are still happening, I just have to look for them. And I am.  I recently came across an old journal that was a list of one good thing that happened each day during my first year of teaching. That was probably a life saver. So, I decided to take up the habit again, and it is such a good thing. It reminds me to actually look for good things, which is a great habit! Give it a shot! :-)


3 comments:

Amy Burmeister said...

That is a great idea! A one good thing a day journal!! I wish I would have started one of those at the beginning of this year - it would have made things a lot easier! :) Sounds like you're are doing amazing things as usual!!

TBH said...

I will try that. I need to focus on that during teaching the same lesson 47 million times a week.

Dierdre said...

Amy-you should totally do it! I forgot how good it is to do. Now I find myself thinking "that was a high point, I'll have to write that one down." For instance, yesterday when Stacy brought the old Better Than Sex cake for the potluck and I brought some other peanut butter chocolate brownie thing, Charisse told me she like mine better!! Yay!!! :-) You have to start somewhere!

When are you moving back to AZ???