Quarter One: Check.

The first quarter is over...on to the second. It doesn't feel like I should be a quarter of the way through the year already, although the idea of five more weeks until Thanksgiving break is admittedly daunting.

The past two weeks have been filled with testing and grading, which is quite draining. As I start the second quarter, I'm looking back on the first quarter and realizing what did or didn't work and what I need to do better. I'm still figuring things out, that's for sure--like how to teach this language without putting any attention on grammar. The grammar nerd and lover in me is in mourning.

The first quarter was good, and I feel good about what I'm doing, but I am seeing a lot of areas that I need to improve upon. That's good, since I should always be reflecting and trying to grow, but sometimes it's intimidating and overwhelming. And it's intimidating and overwhelming with helicopter parents and with the students comparing me to what once was (meaning, the former teacher).

Today in church, part of the message was "give people what they want, not what they think they want...because what they think they want is just a reflection of the past." The example along with that was if Apple had polled people and asked if they wanted the iPad, before it had come out, they would have never put it out, because it hadn't existed so nobody would have known they wanted it. And it's the same with things like iOS7 and new Facebook updates. After every new major update, everyone complains and whines how much they hate it and wants what they had before (many threaten to leave, yet they never do), but after a week or a month, the dust settles and people realize how much they love it and get over what they initially decided to hate.

And that really hit home for me. I know the students compare me to their old teacher a lot, and some students have embraced me, but some have openly not. And I know I focus on that more than I should. So it was a great reminder today to give my students what they want but not what they think they want. What they want is a fun class where they learn German. I can do that, but not in the way that they think they want it, because I'm never going to be their old teacher. And eventually, they'll grow accustomed to the change and life will go on as if nothing happened.