Ready, Set, Here We Go!

Another first class has come and gone. I always find myself comparing them. With each new class, I seem to lose a little anxiety and gain a little more confidence. Gone are the days of not knowing what on Earth Darrell was even talking about. Web 2.0 tools? Who knew! I went home thinking, "What did I get myself into?" I looked around and it didn't look like other people knew either. And now, our first class of 2012, and I actually understood most of what was going on. Yes, there are theories I cannot define, but the terms no longer sound like a foreign language. My mind is no longer a swirling sea of nonsense, but rather a swirling sea of ideas. Now I'm sure the anxiety and confusion will inevitably creep back in at some point, but I am confident that I can do it--confident that WE can do it together. We are going to learn the theories and I hope learn something about how we learn and how our students learn, too. After talking with Coleen, Sue, Scott and Andy about how we learned as kids, I realized that maybe our kids don't really learn in different ways than we did. Maybe they are just trying to tell us, "Teach us the way we learn.". As i read in Sue's blog about the various lessons that stood out from her childhood, I was reminded of my own, including my kindergarten teacher who taught us French, my sixth grade teacher who allowed me to go up to the board and explore new ways to find answers to math problems, and a high school English teacher who allowed me to choose to compare and contrast two books instead of the usual term paper. I am excited to learn the theories and see how I can use them in my classroom.