Teaching Isn't So Scary!

So I apologize ahead of time if I rabbit trail at all during this but I just need to share how awesome my student teaching semester is going so far!

This week was the first week I started teaching in one of my cooperating teacher's classes. And despite the fact that I should have been nervous, I wasn't on Monday. Like everyone who knows me, knows I should have been a nervous wreck but with a bunch of people praying for me, I firmly believe that that is the reason I was calm. I did send a quick text to my mom to pray for me but that was the extent of my freaking out. I just buckled down and completed the first lesson I wanted to accomplish and was prepared for class to begin. After that first lesson, I was totally pumped about teaching! To hear that all the students were actually interested in the book, Touching the Void, was just awesome. I read it beforehand in a day - it was just that good! But that's just my reading speed, I know that isn't the speed it will take us to read the book :)

Today I had to be gone from the school to attend a diversity-technology conference. To be honest, I was bummed because I didn't want to miss class. I decided that I would create a presentation using Google Drive and break students into the groups I had seen them in. I then assigned each group a different mountain (I googled top 10 deadly mountains to make the list interesting!). The mountains were K2, Mt. Everest, Annapurna, The Eiger, Matterhorn, and Mount McKinley. I asked them to find specific information: geography/description of the mountain/height, first known ascent, deaths, any interesting facts, and at least one picture of the mountain. I was nervous to find out how this had gone, especially since I wasn't there to answer any questions.

Skip forward to the conference: I'm just going to touch on the last 3 speakers we had because I feel like I learned the most all day from them. Speaker 1: Jennifer Adams (seriously, check her website out! http://www.jenniferlynnadams.com/). From her, I learned a lot about identity and how important it is for students to know who they are. Everyone has a story that has helped to shape who they are and it's important to take time to find out people's stories. Identity is not how people see you. Identity IS the things, talents, skills, whatever that when you use them, make you happy and you enjoy doing it. And each person has a message to their story, hers was "The Power of Words". I don't know that I have figured out a phrase that perfectly describes mine, but when I do I'll let you know! I'm thinking something to do with books, like George R.R. Martin's phrase "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." If you knew my story, I think that would make sense :) If you ever do want to know my story, let me know and we can meet up and talk!

Speaker 2: The 2014 SD Teacher of the Year, LuAnn Lindskov. She had 10 tips to teaching that I would love to share with you.
   1. Build relationships with your students. Obviously this means appropriate ones, but it's more than just knowing who they are. It's getting to know them and what motivates them to learn and how they are doing.
   2. Have high expectations for yourself & your students.
   3. Learn from your mistakes (they are made on a daily basis) - strive to be a better teacher tomorrow than you were today.
   4. Surround yourself with positive, like-minded colleagues.
   5. Model lifelong learning & share your joy of learning.
   6. Make your connections to real life.
   7. Have a sense of humor.
   8. Show your students that learning is fun & celebrate it.
   9. Keep a "memory box" of notes, photos, cards, emails, etc to remind you why you teach! (And do not call this the "when I want to quit box"...negative implications)
  10. Teach service to your students. This can be to look out for one another on the local level but also on a national level. Her example was talking about hungry people in other countries and her students pointed out that there is a hunger problem right here at home in America, and often in your own city. They asked to fundraise and do a backpack program for these individuals.

Speaker 3: This was actually a Google Hangout with a few of the 2013 Teacher of the Year Recipients: Brian Curtin (Illinois), Andrea Fox (North Dakota), Lauren Eckman (Georgia), and the host was with us in the room, Katie Anderson (South Dakota). Just getting to talk with teachers about different concerns we had (by the way, the were all English teachers....score!), a lot of what they were saying really resonated with me. Plus Google Hangout would be a cool way to have students get to speak with an author, definitely going to look into that!

Jump to after the meeting: I get an email from my cooperating teacher and she mentions that a student told her that they liked the assignment and would love to do more assignments this way. I not ashamed to admit that I totally started cheesing out! I'm so excited to go back tomorrow to keep teaching and learning! I'm just so pumped!!




Here are some quotes that we got throughout the day that also really hit home.

"Teaching is not what we do; it is who we are." Dr. Jill Biden
"Teach students, not subjects."
"Kids before content. Love before all." Sean McComb
" I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou

And to add my own two cents:

Stress & College Students

People continue to ask me during my college career if I'm stressed. Well yeah! And there are several causes that make me feel so stressed. But no one ever asks what is causing the stress or how I can help manage the stress.

Does this mean that being stressed is the new "norm"? People are always talking about how they are stressed or asking how others are. Try googling stress and see what you get. You'll probably get a lot of results containing essays, opinions, and studies of what stress can do to the body like I did. Maybe even some sites that try to be helpful and tell you how to stop procrastinating and stressing out. But do we actually realize how much it can affect us? Did you know it can affect you immune system?! Not to mention your cardiovascular, neuroendocrine (which deals with hormones and metabolism) and the central nervous system! All because of a little stress?

The thing that ends up causing me the most stress is often times feeling overwhelmed with the amount of homework that is given. Some of the times, it is because I choose to wait a bit before starting the assignments but sometimes it is because there is a lot being assigned all at once. Take this semester for example: I had an art class where I was unable to get all the book assignments as well as the in-class assignments done during the given class period. What only furthered my frustration with the project was I could not get Photoshop (which was required for the projects) on my computer for I had already used my free trial up. The other problem I ran into was the times the Mac labs were open before and after classes. The main problem I had with the class was that at the beginning we had too much time to do the homework, but towards the end of the class we had too much homework. I ended up having to skip a class or two the Friday before finals week to get all the art projects done and turned in.

Another thing that tends to go hand in hand with procrastination is allowing distractions to...well distract us. I know I've done this and so have many others: TV shows, movies, or even Netflix. How easy is it to just pick up watching tv shows when they are so available on the internet! Here's a link to what a senior from Auburn, Tory Waltrip, has to say on the matter:


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She's gone through all the years of college, I think she knows what's up!

According to the report Stress in America, reported by the American Psychological Association, stress can be harmful to students' health. Especially when they are constantly stressed out - or chronically stressed. The report says that "an extreme amount of stress can take a severe emotional toll" on people. Well it's no wonder college students end up moody and severely emotional, especially the closer they get to finals week. The research they have done says that if chronic stress is left untreated it can result in serious health conditions, such as: anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and much more. Over-eating is even mentioned as a way that people "deal" with stress. Come on guys, I know I'm not the only one who feels like munching when stressed. The report also says that despite all the connections to major illnesses, 33% of Americans have never discussed ways to manage stress with their doctor or other healthcare provider.

Holy smokes! We, as college students, need to find ways to manage our stress before we end up with a major illness or disease. It's time to start learning how to properly deal with stress. The Open University has some great tips for minimizing distractions and procrastination. Some of the suggestions they give are setting short term deadlines such as reading for 40 minutes and taking a coffee break and turning your phone on silent or asking your friends not to disturb you. I struggle with texting constantly especially when I'm doing homework. It seems to take me twice as long to finish my homework if I'm texting my brother, friends, or boyfriend. I just need to let them know I need to work on my homework for a bit and I will text them once I'm done. But that's easier said than done because of how technologically dependent I am!

The report offers some great ways to help manage stress. They say that even taking a small step to reduce stress and to improve emotional stress can have a positive effect on your life. For me, this would be not procrastinating and wait until the last minute/day to do homework or study. Physical activity is mentioned as a great way to manage stress. By doing something active, such as taking a walk or biking, will produce endorphins. Endorphins are a neurotransmitter to the brain that tell it to feel good and can help with treating mild forms of anxiety or depression. I've taken to hanging a punching bag in the garage and focusing my stress and anger on the bag. I end up feeling much better afterwards!

Eating healthy and balancing your day with a healthy balance of sleep and good food can help in enhancing your life. As a warning, the report does state that if high levels of stress continue over a long period of time, or problems from stress interfere with your day to day living, it is very important to see a licensed mental health professional/psychologist. They can help you overcome the barriers that keep you from living a healthy life and they can help you learn stress-management techniques.

As an Education major, I will certainly keep my experiences in mind especially when it comes to assigning homework with enough time to get everything done. As an English major, I understand that not everyone loves English as much as I do and that it can be stressful for others. I will work to make ways to teach English in a fun way and to keep it interesting so that perhaps it will help students to not procrastinate on account of the homework being boring or dry. I know that not everyone will enjoy it but I will do my best and that's all I can do. Perhaps I will even have a small talk about managing stress to my classes, especially my senior classes because of the dreaded "senioritis".

Of course, as a teacher I will have several points of stress that I will have to learn to manage and adapt to. But by reading the APA's article, Stress in America, I feel that I am better equipped to deal with stress. I have a feeling I will be making some lifestyle choices soon and hopefully you all do the same and fight back with stress!

Open Mic Night

Even though I was very nervous to have to be the host of Open Mic, I thought it went okay. My favorite part was getting to read my poem which I didn't expect people to react to but they thought it was funny. I'm glad they did because I was scared that no one would react to it. Overall it was a very successul night with the singing, stories, and poetry readings.

But after seeing something that was posted on a DSU confessions page, I ended up calling my mother to tell her about it. And yes, I talk to my mom because she always knows the right thing to say and she cheered me up. Here's a screenshot of the "anonymous" post:

First off, an open mic is not a competition. A competition would imply that people were competing for prizes and for first place. It was an open mic where people could share.

Secondly, we did treat him with respect but he was onstage for 30 minutes talking and we needed to give others who were still in line a chance to read. It was not fair to those who had yet to perform. If any of the other performers had gone too long, we would have done the same thing. We watched the time on all the performers. Never once did we treat him with disrespect, I had to go up and ask him to wrap it up at the 20 minute mark to which he said he was almost done. But 6 minutes later, he wasn't done yet and by that time we needed to move on no matter how close he was to being done with the story. He was very brave in letting people know that he had a stutter and people had made fun of him in high school. It was very brave to stand up in front of people he didn't know and share a personal story. I felt horrible for having to do so but other people still needed to perform. By the way, the drawing we had for all those who performed to get a chance to win a Pizza Ranch gift card? He was one of the winners.

And I felt bad for people who got their poems judged and some people left before hearing the whole thing. We did not censor any of the content, and I don't understand how people can be upset about a poem about violence and assume that all poetry is that way. Plus, this campus has had other events not hosted by the English Club where that event used worse language than that poem did. There was a poem about domestic violence where it started out with a beating and it was harsh, but in the end of the poem it talked about how the behavior was wrong. People who left before the end of it have no right to comment on it. If you would have seen the audiences faces, we were just as shocked by the violence but we stayed till the end to hear him say how wrong it was. Poetry is meant to be provocative, and the domestic violence one was. It brought attention to what actually happens and the performer did a great job.

The post made me feel horrible but you know what? The person who wrote this "anonymous" post is a small person because you don't understand how long it took my advisor to get me to go up in front of people to tell him he needed to wrap it up. That I was almost in tears of embarrassment in doing so. But I have nothing to feel ashamed of or sorry for. I had to make sure that other people got a chance to perform.

I will not allow a small-minded person to make me feel horrible. The Open Mic night was a success and from now on we will have a time limit. I was glad I presented my poem and I'm glad that people were brave and shared their songs, stories, and poetry.