It is good to be back! Today was an awesome day. I can't pinpoint any one thing that made it so good, but I got home from class tonight and just thought "Wow...today was great!" It's a good feeling.
I was even kind of looking forward to class tonight. The topic was grade retention, and I was very interested to see what everyone else had to say about it. Aryn and I have been talking about it for a few weeks now off and on and I am really enjoying it. I really like to see the balance between theory and practice, and I think it is important to see how they fit together. I'm really glad that I am taking this class while being at my field site, because it gives me the chance to learn about things theoretically and in research, and then talk about them with an experienced teacher who deals with them on a daily basis. I love it!
This morning, I felt really disconnected and lost after having the snow day yesterday, but I got back into the swing of things. My biggest problem today was MATH.
I have always been terrible -- in my opinion -- at teaching math to others. From children all the way up to my peers in college, I can't ever seem to smoothly explain myself. I "get math" (always have) but I am just really bad at helping others to "get" it. I know how to do it the way I know how, and if someone doesn't get it that way I have a hard time explaining it a different way. That doesn't even begin to cover how to teach someone something for the very first time! I'm freaking out a little bit over this, because I want to explain things to them clearly and so that they'll understand...and I worry that I haven't -- or that I can't. I know that I can do this, I just need to figure out how. It's the one place that I am really, REALLY unconfident in my teaching abilities. It's something I'm working on and that I'm getting help with. Hopefully over the next week I will feel better about it.
Other than that, today was close to perfect. I cannot believe how good I feel right now. I'm caught up on homework and lesson plans, I actually had a lot of fun in class tonight (I really love to debate things), and I had a good day at my field site. I wish every day could be like this one!
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