From teacher to student

This past spring, my wonderful friend Jamie informed me of a graduate fellowship program at Merrimack College. It's basically free grad school for my services as a student teacher for one year. Not a bad gig! So I applied and got in! The timing was perfect! Eric got offered the job at Noise Control right before I received my acceptance. God had it all planned out, knowing I would have had to decline if Eric didn't have a job, considering there is no pay stipend for me. It's a one year program. I take classes July-May and will be student teaching in Haverhill Sept.-June. And in May, I will have my Masters in English as a Second Language! I am so excited because I know this will open doors for me in the future.

I started my first class this week.. It's called A Successful and Positive Classroom. The professor is fantastic! She is a fourth grade teacher in Westford and is such a wonderful example of what a good teacher really is. She is very practical and knowledgeable and I am looking forward to learning from her. I also love the book she uses. It's called The First Days of School: How to be an Effective Teacher. It's awesome! I recommend it to any and every teacher out there! So far, I've read about the effect high expectations have on children and how to set up a classroom that guarantees success and promotes high self-esteem. 

Along with life updates, I will also be blogging about what I've learned. Hopefully it is beneficial to you, but it is more of way for me to connect and think through the freshly learned material. 

1. Teachers should be the thermostat, not the thermometer. As a teacher, you have the choice to set the tone or react to that of the students. 

2. Always use please and thank you when speaking to kids. People who neglect to say please to children are teaching them that it is okay to bark orders and ignore the dignity of others.

3. Student success is limited by adult expectations. 

Our Business

Ours is not the business of producing doctors,

or lawyers, or teachers, or nurses,

or scientists, or policemen, or sales people,

or factory workers - or higher test scores.

Ours is the business of producing smiles on young faces, 

happiness in young hearts, and dreams in young minds.

The rest will take care of itself.