This site is a class blog space for new Career and Technical Specializations and Heathcare Science teachers enrolled in the New Teacher Institute (NTI) at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
open mic
This week was OK for the most part. Seemed to a little sick at times but made it Thur the week. Kids came back from fall break and seemed to be relaxed and ready to learn. Not by the end of the week. I did have one student come to me to help him with a problem with another student. I went and talked to the teacher and she said that he had changed his behavior the last couple of weeks. He is trying to play basketball this year. He was placed in my homeroom because he was having problems with his old homeroom teacher. He is a young black male who's father has not been in his life and by chance me and his father grew up together and played together as little kids. When he found that out he opened up to me and began to listen to me. We still have our days when we bump heads but at the end of the day i win. That makes me happy to be a teacher. I tell all my students that you will make mistakes and life but it is how you deal with them that defines you as a person at times.
Hi, Courtney - I imagine this will become a familiar role for you throughout your teaching career. Good for you for taking this on and being such a positive role model!
ReplyDeleteCourtney,
ReplyDeleteI have some smaller situations like this and I can tell you, for me, it becomes very addicting. Being able to impact a young person's life, there is nothing like it in the world. Me and my wife have been involved in taking some young adults to a youth detention center in our town. We started doing this before I was a teacher. Once I became a teacher, I started telling them, "If you need me, my room number is 82. Come talk to me and I will try to help you." Towards the end of the school year last year, I had a young man approach me and say, "Do you remember me?" i promptly answered him, "I know who you are. I can tell you what seat you were sitting in the last time I saw you." He has now decided to turn his life around, become a Christian, and was looking for good role models. He has come to talk to me two or three times since that day. I find him a football games and tell him how proud I am of him. I find him in the halls and I continue to ask him how his grades are and is he behaving. He probably doesn't know this, but in a small way, I look at him as being mine now. Courtney, embrace this idea of being a role model. There is nothing like it.