Sorry for the late post. I have been somewhat distracted lately. It has been very difficult for me stay focused and centered here in Indiana when my mind is in Washington. This was how I felt on Thursday when I taught Rock Cycle too.
Sometimes you just don't feel like teaching on the day that you are scheduled to teach. I guess the trick is learning how to compartmentalize your life for a couple of hours and leave all of your own stuff at the door. I wasn't as bad as Joe the failed naturalist. I didn't tell the kids any details about my life, but I may have lacked my normal enthusiasm. Some kids are going to be excited and engaged on their own and others are not going to care about the rock cycle no matter what we do. Then there is that group in the middle whose learning will actually be effected by the quality of our teaching and our attitudes. There are always some in the group who might just fall in love with the idea of spending the day outdoors if we can be present and happy no matter how we might otherwise feel. Figuring out how to do that in the next four weeks is my challenge to myself.
I feel you Carli. Although I've found that even on the days that I REALLY don't feel like teaching, I still end up having a REALLY great time! Hopefully the same is true for you. It really is like a different part of my brain turns on and the rest of my life is gone from my mind for those 4 hours.
ReplyDeleteI'm particularly excited for you to learn all these different educational programs so that you might be able to apply them to your Washington Farm! Seems to me like a lot of the programs we teach here could be tweaked and applied to all sorts of different contexts.