What Do You Love?

Some of my students working together on a storytelling project

What do you love?

As a consumer of many different blogs for a long time now, I have decided to start writing my own. There are hundreds of resources out there for getting started in blogging, and each one has a different tidbit of information that will  but one piece of advice is prevalent in all my reading – write about what you love. http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/blogging/6-things-to-do-before-publishing-your-first-blog-post/ (see hint #1)

This has given me pause to think. What do I love? There are several obvious answers that wouldn’t necessarily make good subjects for this blog, but will certainly have an influence and what I write and how I write it. My love for my family, while interesting to me, may not be interesting to readers outside my immediate circle.

Three years ago, I started my current position teaching third and fourth grades at a small Lutheran school in Omaha, Nebraska. One of my first students was a very outgoing and intelligent third grade girl (let’s call her Josie). Before third grade started, she had read Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, and countless other books. Her language development was phenomenal, and her other academic skills were very enhanced. In the same class, I had a boy (let’s call him Sam) who was small for his age and had already been held back once. He struggled with much of his coursework, as well as an overall lack of motivation or desire to do really well. My great challenge that first year was to meet the individual needs of both these children. Every time I gave an assignment or planned a lesson, I always thought to myself, “How can I challenge Josie and Sam? How can I help both of them succeed?” I have always had an interest in technology and its implications for instruction at many different levels, so I started coming up with ways to integrate different tools into my teaching. Thus began an odyssey that has changed the way I think about teaching and learning.

That is my short answer for why I’m writing this blog. I love teaching, and I love my students. Because I love them, I am determined to find the best ways to teach them. I am bent on refining my own teaching and thinking to serve them in the best way possible. Technology tools and methodology are only a small part of the puzzle. It has taken a lot of hard work, thought, and baby steps to bring about real changes in the way I have taught, but I can honestly say that the process has made a huge difference over time in my effectiveness as an instructor.

We teachers are some of the most influential people in children’s lives. The time we spend with them under our care has a ripple effect that spreads beyond the scope of what we could ever understand at the time. I hope that by writing this blog I can become a more effective teacher and that I can challenge other teachers to do the same.