positive day

My productivity today was much better than it has been lately. I am hoping that my educator doldrums have proven temporary and that I will be able to make more progress toward my goal of being an extraordinary teacher.

I arrived at school early and was very productive in preparing for my classes. As is the norm, I failed to do any planning over the weekend, taking full advantage of having no school by doing next to nothing school-related. I felt really good this morning when I arrived at work and was uncharacteristically creative in preparing for my lessons. My 8th grade class did a drawing assignment based on a physical description of John Adams, which proved to be very engaging and amusing. I also was able to incorporate a podcast from howstuffworks.com that I had listened to on my way to school. We were talking about the guillotine in class and I then played them a podcast about medieval torture devices which mentioned the guillotine. The kids were hooked!

In about 10 minutes I begin my math tutoring session where I will be working with 7th graders, trying to help them prepare for the looming giant that is the state standardized exam.

There is a direct correlation between the amount of time and effort I put into my lesson planning, and the behavior of students and my general demeanor. I need to work on being more motivated to get work done at home. It proves to be difficult as I spend about 12 hours a day away from home - the last thing I want to do is more school work. That is something I need to work on in order to be better at what I do.

I hope that I can try and keep a more positive attitude. Today in the teacher's lounge, I said something about having an awesome class, to which another younger colleague responded, "I did too!" This is not a frequent exchange in the stereotype-upholding deeply negative teachers' room. It made me happy when I saw the look on other teachers' faces, as if this idea of enjoying ones career was so foreign that it was almost as if we were speaking in tongues.