Ripples

Sometimes as I think back on the year so far, it still strikes me as just weird that I am actually a teacher.  In the day-to-day, it’s just life.  I plan lessons, grade papers, look back and let students know what they can do to raise their grades, and sometimes hand out detention slips.  But looking at the big picture, I’m shaken sometimes.  I’m a real, live teacher.  It’s not just me that’s affected by that.  Even after this year, I will always be my students’ 8th grade (or 7th grade) English teacher. 

I think we all have those teachers who we remember—not as being our favorite teachers in the world, but simply as being good teachers.  People we learned from, who led classes we didn’t dread going to, who taught at least one or two lessons that stuck in our heads over the years.  For me, there are several.  6th grade Social Studies, 7th grade English, my 5th grade teacher (who coincidentally ran into me when I was in my early 20s and working at an appliance/electronics store and recognized me before I recognized her), 8th grade Social Studies, 7th grade Science (though now that I think about it, due to the number of lessons, projects, and units I remember vividly from 7th grade Science, maybe Mrs. Braatz really deserves to be in the rockstar all-time great teacher category…), and others.  These teachers taught me something, to be sure.  They weren’t the most popular teachers in the grade level, and I never became “close” with them.  But I remember the lessons they taught me. 
And more importantly, I remember them as a part of my life.

This is the type of teacher I strive to be.   

I hope that ten or twenty years down the road, my students stop, think back, and say, “Let’s see… 7th grade… I had Ms. Rosendale for English.  Yeah, that was an okay class.  I remember a project we did…” 

If they remember me, I will count my first year of teaching a success.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive t...
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and deci...
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming t...
Read more