Teaching the children of the world
I received an email from Florencia today and it turns out that she is teaching college and ESL down in Argentina. It made me feel good about the world knowing that she is contributing to education. It occurred to me that teaching is a lot more then being able to regurgitate information back and forth, but about connecting and focusing attention on the emotional position of a student as well as the intellectual. I think Florencia does an amazing job at this, and i am thankful.
I interviewed with the special school district today, and i feel really optimistic about it. I am pretty sure i can get the job. The area coordinator for parkway was really impressed with my resume and was excited when i told her i was capable of dealing with strong emotional situation with out regressing to childhood and falling into a deep state of depression. I just explained to her that at my old job kids would try to hurt me in any way they could, consequently because they didn't know how to deal with their own emotions. We had a funny battle of stories where i was trying to one-up her on crazy situations that have happened while working with children, but she kicked my ass by telling me a story about an autistic kid who broke her leg because he couldn't figure out a math problem. RESPECT!
Now i am pretty sure my life path is leading me towards becoming an educator, well at least until i become a rock star. My new goals are forming around developing my teaching skills. I figure that if i plan on going to Japan to teach ESL the upcoming teaching experience can only help me. I finally feel comfortable thinking about graduate studies now, because i have a practical reason for pursing it. I do feel a bit strange about seeing my future fall into place right before my eyes, but if there is anything that i have learned in the past couple of months it's that life is always going to be undefined and personal choices will always have tremendous power over the moment.
In a way i have been very jealous of everyone going back to school, but i realized today that if i get my way i will be going back to school myself, but this time i am no longer the student, but the teacher. My pride is getting the better of me, mainly because i feel like the best teachers are also still students.
I interviewed with the special school district today, and i feel really optimistic about it. I am pretty sure i can get the job. The area coordinator for parkway was really impressed with my resume and was excited when i told her i was capable of dealing with strong emotional situation with out regressing to childhood and falling into a deep state of depression. I just explained to her that at my old job kids would try to hurt me in any way they could, consequently because they didn't know how to deal with their own emotions. We had a funny battle of stories where i was trying to one-up her on crazy situations that have happened while working with children, but she kicked my ass by telling me a story about an autistic kid who broke her leg because he couldn't figure out a math problem. RESPECT!
Now i am pretty sure my life path is leading me towards becoming an educator, well at least until i become a rock star. My new goals are forming around developing my teaching skills. I figure that if i plan on going to Japan to teach ESL the upcoming teaching experience can only help me. I finally feel comfortable thinking about graduate studies now, because i have a practical reason for pursing it. I do feel a bit strange about seeing my future fall into place right before my eyes, but if there is anything that i have learned in the past couple of months it's that life is always going to be undefined and personal choices will always have tremendous power over the moment.
In a way i have been very jealous of everyone going back to school, but i realized today that if i get my way i will be going back to school myself, but this time i am no longer the student, but the teacher. My pride is getting the better of me, mainly because i feel like the best teachers are also still students.