Thank God for the Summertime

Somehow a year has flown by, right before my very eyes. When I think back to my very first day at my school, the week before students started, it seems like forever ago. And yet I feel like I just started.

Today was the last day with students. Honestly, last week was kind of the last week with students, because most stopped coming after their exams were done, and grades were due on Monday, so there wasn't much of a point to come after Monday. That was strange and a little frustrating, because I didn't have a proper goodbye. When they left after their exams, I didn't know if they would be back for the handful of classes we technically had left or not. Some promised they would come say goodbye--while others mentally wished me good riddance, I'm sure. Some did come say goodbye, some passed their Well Wishes through other students, and some came to school until the very last day. Don't get me wrong, it was everything I wanted all year, just not at the right time. A work week without would have been great earlier in the year, but there's not much to done once grades are turned in and your room is packed away. The other Frau and I managed to work out a skeletal outline of what we want next year to look like (topics, grammar goals, quizzes, projects, etc.), so we did put the time to good use.

And my brain is buzzing with ideas for next year. I've been waiting for next year since day one of this year! I knew I would make mistakes this year. There would be days that were beyond frustrating and lessons that would flop and whole units or projects I would want to redo. And the beautiful thing about my job, is I get just the chance to do just that. And even the things I don't change might not work on next year's students, so I'll have to spontaneously change it at the right time. That's what I love about the job. Although my content does not really change, the students sure do. I'm fascinated by how students in one class can love an activity or ace an assessment while another class of the exact same lesson can hate the activity or fail the assessment. That's just how it goes. There's no special formula for being a good teacher or engaging your whole class or getting the students to learn your content; instead, there are tons of great methods and theories that all work for various students in various situations. But I wouldn't change that. Sitting around with the students this week reminded me just how much I love this job. I love how, even on the bad days, the classes zip by (unless I'm giving an exam). Weeks may seem long, but but the days generally don't.

When I think about all I anticipated and all I was unsure about, I still feel the same way in some ways. I understand the general workings of my school and responsibilities I have besides planning and teaching lessons. I have a better idea of the curriculum and the flow that it should have. And I have a year's worth of experience finally under my belt. But there's still so much I don't know. I don't claim to be the best teacher, or even close. I know I had some awesome ideas and awesome lessons, but I know I also had some miserable and awful lessons that I do not want to repeat next year. I'm constantly learning and figuring things out, and I hope that never changes.

Graduation was also yesterday, and as a teacher, I was in attendance. I only knew a handful of seniors, because the majority of my students were freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. Seeing them all graduate made me think back to my high school and college graduation, and all the hope and excitement it brought. It also made me really excited to see the students I had this year graduate over the next three years. I know the ceremony will be more meaningful to me when I know more of the students. Hopefully I'm here long enough to see them all graduate! :-)

So, now I just have one more half-day--a half-day of stuffing envelopes for my homeroom class report cards, checking off everything on the school's checklist, and saying goodbye to the friends I've made. Then it's off to home for a week for my birthday week and Europe (Germany, France, and Spain) with the school for two weeks!

And now for the perfect song to describe my feelings about summer:

Thank God for the Summertime - Ben Rector :-)

Teaching in the 21st Century

Being a teacher in the 21st century is awesome! There's a ton of technology at my fingertips. I can use Google for finding already-made lessons or lesson supplements, and for all the images I need for teaching vocabulary. It's really excellent, and Google makes my life a zillion times easier.

There are, of course, downsides to all this modern technology. We are dealing with students who not only have shorter attention spans--because they expect to be constantly entertained--but also have an obsessive compulsion to be on their phone while watching a movie and listening to music, so why can't they be texting their best friend, updating Instagram, and learning in my classroom, all simultaneously? I mean, really, multi-tasking at it's finest, right?

And while that's frustrating, I can deal with that. I can take away phones after too many warnings. I can try to come up with exciting games to review material and video clips or songs to aide in the learning process. I can incorporate as much technology as possible. What I can't do is help what they do at home. I'm not talking about cyber-bullying, although that does break my heart. I'm talking about how my students have decided they need to know every detail of my personal life and some make it their mission to find out every detail. In a world of modern technology, anonymity is no longer an easy thing. I'm pretty open with my students. I'll tell them how many siblings I have, where I'm from, where I went to school, and how old I am. But I have to draw the line somewhere. But when I try to draw the line, they take that as a personal challenge to find me on every social media site online. It makes me want to delete all of my social media accounts--but then we're back to that age-old argument for so many different topics: They shouldn't control my life! When it comes to online profiles, whatever the site, I'm pretty safe and set all my privacy settings pretty high. I leave it public enough where real friends/family can find me, but try to make it private enough where the unwanted can't find me. But these kids are smart. They know their technology and know how to search for whatever they're looking for. I know how to, too, but I never thought I'd spend an afternoon googling myself and searching for all the places they might find me that I've forgotten about (like the Twitter account I had that I thought I'd deleted long ago, but of course, they promptly found it at the beginning of the year.)

Again, I'm okay with sharing basic information with them, as long as they ask me personally, but things get creepy and uncomfortable, when they come into class retorting that they found something of me online or they discovered my family members online. I can't protect my family from their creepiness, nor should I have too, right? I'm not a wild person or someone with a bad past, so there's nothing damaging to find on me, but it's just an extremely unwelcome violation of privacy. And I can't do anything about it. I can't take their home computers or cell phones when they aren't in my classroom. I hope that telling them I would contact their parents if it continued deterred the behavior for now...I guess I know I'm not cut out for the life of a celebrity.

On the bright side: Ten school days left!

Part of Your World

Wow, it's already been two weeks since Spring Break! Although this year has flown by, boy was I ready for it. After 10 weeks of no breaks, thanks to snow day make-up days, both teachers and students were itching for one.

And after discovering that I had the same spring break as my best friend, who is teaching in Honduras, I figured it was probably one of the only (if not the only) chance I'd have to go to Honduras, especially with someone who knew what she was doing, spoke the language, and knew the place more like a local than a tourist. So, I booked my tickets and counted down the days until I left.

On Sunday, April 13, I woke up at 3am so I could get to the airport in Charlotte, NC by 5. Everyone who has ever had to deal with me in the mornings knows that this was not something I was looking forward to. But the excitement of seeing my best friend and traveling (my how that itch needed to be scratched) overrode that, so it really didn't feel so terrible. Don't get me wrong, no part of me wanted to get out bed when the alarm went off all too soon, but it wasn't nearly as painful as I'd imagined ;-)

I made it to the airport by about 5:15, and breezed through checking my luggage, security, and my transfer in Atlanta. Even though my transfer time was less than an hour, and Atlanta is an enormous airport, I still made it to my gate before boarding even started. Easy peasy!

Then, I got to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The landing strip in Tegus is the 2nd shortest in the world, and to top it off, you have to fly extremely close to the mountains and buildings on the mountains to make it to the incredibly short landing strip. Luckily I found this out after we had landed, so it wasn't so scary, but boy am I impressed with those pilots now! Once I got off the airport and through customs (again, easy!), I looked for my bag. I didn't see it, so I tried asking a worker who was pulling bags to my fellow plane-mates if there were any more coming. He didn't really understand English, so he took my luggage tag and started looking. After a woman interpreted his question of what color my bag was, he continued looking and determined it was not there (which I already figured, since I didn't see it), so I joined the short but slow-moving line to find my luggage. Eventually they informed me that by bag was still in Atlanta--excellent--and would arrive the next day. Stupidly, I didn't pack any extra clothes in my carry-on, but I was able to borrow a few things from my bestie and we bought some of the necessities.

My luggage came just in time for me to pack another bag for our planned trip (within a trip?) to Copán.

So, we set out on Tuesday morning to Copan. We took a bus to San Pedro Sula (think Coach bus) and another bus (think run-down Coach bus) to Copán. We had to get up early, but with the time difference, it felt like getting up for school, so that was okay. The buses (especially the second) were slow, so we napped, read, listened to music, and played games on our iPhones/iPads. In San Pedro Sula we found out that the buses weren't going to be running on Friday, because of Holy Week. This was confirmed by an English-speaking Hotel owner we met on the 2nd bus, but he further informed us that the buses don't run on Thursday OR Friday. I was scheduled to leave on Saturday to go back to the States, so taking a bus after Friday was not an option. Which meant, that we spent only 20ish hours in Copán. It could have been frustrating or disappointing, except that I went into the trip with no expectations--I only wanted to see my best friend and see her life there. So, once we got to Copán, we laughed it off after a while and found some food for dinner before crashing for the evening. The next day, we saw the Mayan Ruins, which would have been disappointing if we had been unable to see them. They were intricate and ancient, full of questions that I don't know have answers. It's pretty cool to see and walk around in and ON such ancient things! Here are some pictures:

After the ruins, we went back to the hotel room, gathered our things, and headed to the bus station to go back to Tegucigalpa. 

Once back in Tegucigalpa, we went did things in and around the city. We went out to eat and went to a cute little town with lots of shopping and some restaurants. I had a papusa, which is like a Central-American grilled cheese, and later probably the yummiest fruit popsicle ever. She showed me her school and classroom. We also hung out at her house and played games on the Wii and Zumba-ed. We read books and listened to music and relaxed. It was really just nice to be. No school to worry about, nothing we HAD to do. We just got to spend time together. And that's all I really wanted in the first place: to hang out with my best friend and see her Honduran life. Check! :-)