Encouragement

Regardless of how this week started, I must say it ended well. I have felt so encouraged the last two days--and for entirely different reasons.

Yesterday was encouraging because I felt like I was truly equipping my students, and they were excited about learning. Most of the ways I've seen other, more experienced teachers teach in my schools have been to be very direct and show the kids exactly what is expected of them. I've been mimicking that style so far. Well, I decided to try something different as we began a new personal profile project to teach advanced editing in Microsoft Word (middle school). I gave the students a sample I created about me, showed them my requirements and a rubric, and told them they were in middle school, so I wasn't going to hold their hand through this assignment--they had to THINK on their own. The results were beyond my wildest dreams! It was great!! The kids were engaged and focused on the task for the entire time period. I felt very encouraged.

I also had a few 7th graders actually THANK me for teaching them some keyboard shortcuts. Just out of the blue! They said "thank you for teaching us these! They work great!" It knocked my socks off.

Then I played a slideshow I made out of the apple orchard pictures for the primary grades, and they were quite pleased as well. Maybe it's the people pleaser in me, but I enjoyed serving all those students in those ways in one day!

Today we didn't have students, as we had a faculty meeting all day (financial planning, study skills, report card info, scheduling stuff, etc.). After we finished at 3, I tackled the donated computers to format them and get them setup for our resource room. Well, I left school at about 10:15! The time went by quickly, and I never even touched the pizza or PB&J I had in the room with me. AND! I got all the computers up and running with the phone support of Peter Van Wylen and some swapping floppy drives. It wasn't exhausting, even though it was a 13 hour day. (actually, I brought one machine home and have been working on it for the last hour) Sometimes, the motivation just kicks in! Thanks, Jesus.

Tomorrow I'm going to go watch the Michigan/Indiana game with Eric Summers. Go blue!!!