Two weeks ago I received some great news. There was an announcement that teachers had the opportunity to write educational grants for pretty much anything they though would be beneficial to the learning of out students. After thinking long and hard, my partner teacher and I realized how beneficial it would be to have a SmartBoard in our classroom. We figured it was a shot in the dark but we tried anyway. We wrote the grant and re-read it over and over, and in my opinion, if I would have been in charge of giving the "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" it woudl definitely have been the latter.

The idea of having the Smart Board made so much sense to me and I knew how I would use it, but the grant proposal was missing something. Then I remembered Grapplings Learning Spectrum. I sat my partner down and reminded him that technology is not only supposed to aid in learning but it is supposed to transform learning. When I took our time to think uip all the possible ways that the smart board would allow us to further our contructivist approach to learning the proposal was phenomenal. Reading all of our plans to use it in teh classroom made me so extremely excited and I knew that though receiving a Samrtbora was unfathomable in teh beginning, we had a great chance with this student centered poposal.

We received the news early this past Monday saying that we had been approved for teh Smartboard and after all the training sessions are attended, it will be given to us within the following month. It's ironic how a guy growing up in a district (KCMSD) with limited resources is able to start a chool year technologically illiterate, design a plan to incorporate technology into his teaching, and also be blessed beyond need with instruction changing technological resources ll within a two month time frame. God is doing some great things for me and I'm glad I am favored in his eyes. Because of this blessings he has placed on me, my students will reap benefits even greater as I put my blessings to use.

I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO GET FIRED!!

My experience thus far at Rock Bridge has been very positive. The students are wonderful, my co-teacher is great, and the school environment is pretty close to ideal. Everything seems to be going my way, until one day it happened. I got the scare of my life. I'll just tell the story the way that it happened.

My co-tecaher and I love what we do and we are determined to make learning interesting for our students. The are doing a Middle East unit right now and we thought we'd spice up the interest level by doing a skit depicting the realities of developing a civilization in ancient Middle Eastern times. With me being the narrator and Greg the "Middle Eastern Man" we thought that the skit would be a sure fire way to help the students understand the material while being entertained at the same time.

Greg should have won an academy award for his performance as The Middle Eastern Man. He came in wearing standard nomadic clothing (graduation gown as a sock, no shoes, and a t-shirt around his head. He praised the God of the light, and the god of teh spiders, the god of water and everything else to show this idea of their polytheistic belief and how it was the people's duty to keep the gods happy. I beat chalk erasers around his head to depict a draught and dust storm and immediaely after drenched him with water to show flooding. This was to illustrate the unpredictabulity of the environmental features. We once again prayed to the gods for giving such fertile land and the opportunity to settle although everything was not perfect.

As expected the skit seemed a success, but after one more scan around the room I found a young man silently crying to himself. Tears falling drop by drop onto his notebook. Rationality came to me. This kid is from the Middle East, what have we done!! Did we make clear that we were talking about ancient Middle Eastern development? Did we do anything stereotypical? They did wear head wraps back then, didn't they? All these questions ran through my mind.I wrote him a note telling him I hope he didn;t think we were being sterotypical and explain to him the purpose. I asked him to meet me outside. He left the classroom at the end of the period without one word spoken to me.

i talked to his counselor and told her the situation. I couldn't believe, me, an individual from a marginalized race, did not take the 5 or 6 seconds to explain the purpose of the activity and that i didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I know what it's like to be laughed at because you practiceisn;t what people "the norm." I figured that the activity was inconsiderate and didn;t think about the feelings of ALL my students all the way through. I was sure to be fired once the principal heard about my inconsiderate actions.

I found in the end that I was having first-year teacher paranoia. The student indeed knew individuals who were stil polytheistic and performed those same practices today and the activity did not hurt his feelings, but the fact that those people he knows are looked down upon because of their practices. He told his counselor that he nderstood the activity and he that we were his favorite teachers. I was quite relieved at finding out this information.

I definitely learned a valuable lesson. Although this situation did not blow up in my face, I need to remain cognizant of the lessons and activities I do in school. It is important to make sure that I do not offend anyone ith any of my instructional techniques.

Educational Duality

So I've come to realize that this Fellows thing is gonna be a lot harder than I anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching and I love learning, but doing them both at the same time is pretty hard work.

Teacher by Day
I have the pleasure of teaching Sophomore World Studies at Rock Bridge High School this year and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!! My students are open and receptive to me, they have a hunger to learn, and they are still very impressionable, making classroom managemnet a fairly simple task. I love the fact that I'm teaching a subjet that calls for me to humble myself and ask for help from many directions. Being a "self-centered American" I nver took the time to learn much about anything that seemed of little importance to American society, but having to learn and teach about the world's contributions to the development of society I have come to have a deeper appreciation for and understanding of the world around me.

Student by Night
A person who is serious about their profession is adament about becoming a master of his craft and that is what I am hoping to do through the Fellows Program. I have to admit thought that being a student has never been this hard. Giving and grading homework for my students and recieivenig and completing homework for my professors makes me a very tired young person by the end of the week. But I would not rather be doing anything else in the world though. I thank God for my weariness because he sees me worthy enough to bless me with a mind for success, a love for kids, and a never ending drive to fuse the two together to become the best instructor I can possibly be. I thank God again for all the blessings, and I'll continue to pass my weariness along to him so that he will continuously rejuvenate me tthat I may continueon the path of fufilling the purpose he has for my life.

Too Much Time for Worrying!!!

The firt day of school is quickly approaching but in my eyes it couldn;t come soon enough. I've been stressing myself out over everything.

Do I have everything I need?
Will the students like me?
How well will they take to such a young teacher?
Am I smart enough to do this job?
Are there things that I should be thinking about that I'm neglecting to do?

I know that I studied for four years for this first day of school and I'm gettting tired of planning for it...I just want it to happen. I'm excited and I watn everything to be perfect, but I'm letting my nervousness overshadow my excitement. I've planned lessons and ICEBREAKERS, changed them, re-planned, and changed back to the original idea so many times. After talking to many other Fellows, My mind has been placed a ease. They dont know if they have everthing they need, they dont know if the students will like them, they're young teacehrs just like me, everyone questions their content knowledge, and of course there are thigns they should be doing that they have no idea they should be.
The beauty of all that is that we're not expected to have ALL the answers, we're supposed to be nervous, and in being in a professiont hat strives to cultivate life long learners, we should worry about our content knowledge because we will be growing right along with our students.

I'm excited to see how my first few days of teaching will pan out, and I 'm looking forward to meeting more of my students and embarking on our first years of high school, together. They as students ad me as a teacher...WOW, Me, A TEACHER!!!