Teaching Hope: Anticipation

The first entry that speaks to me is actually the first entry in this section, “A New Teacher: First Day”, because a lot of the feelings that this teacher is feeling on their first day as a teacher are feelings that I am almost certain that I will have on my first day. One of my biggest fears as a teacher is that my students will immediately not respond to me and I’ll flounder on my very first day on the job. I remember being nervous extremely nervous on my first day of practicum and worrying that I would not connect to my students and they would not like me very much and I went through the same thing when I subbed while home over Christmas break. I connected with a lot of these fears and I admired the way that that this teacher was able to handle the awkward situation, and I hope that if my first day on the job ends up taking a similar route that I can handle it the way that this teacher did. I also really admired the way that this teacher handled the particular situation with Miguel and made him feel comfortable in their classroom. This is the kind of rapport that I hope to create with my students, so reading thoughts from someone who had the same feelings and fears that I do, spoke to me a lot.

The other entry that really stood out to me and that I connected with was entry #13, “Classroom in Tune.” The reason that this entry spoke to me and stood out to me was the musical element of it. I consider myself to be a pretty musical person, I played an instrument in school for eight years, I’ve taken piano here at UMF, I can read music, and I’ve been a dancer for almost my entire life, so it was really cool to read about a teacher using music in their classroom. I think that sometimes the arts go overlooked in academic classes, even though there are really interesting and unique ways that things like art and music can be used. I want to be able to bring the element of music and art and dance into my social studies classroom in the future, so reading this was a really cool insight into, not only how to bring music into a classroom, but elements of culture and create a unique classroom environment for all of your students.