New Blog

It's exciting to finally be within a semester of student teaching, but it's also a bit frightening, too.
I'll be embarking on a new career, a career I know I'll love, yet I hope and pray I'm ready. Last year, when I was observed by my professor--I'd hoped for a better performance. My nerves got the better of me.

Coupled with full-time employment, my courses can be daunting, to say the least. But courses like Middle Grades Social Studies is exactly what I need to become a better teacher.

I have a real sense of urgency, now. Last year, I read a book called "The World is Flat" about how technology and the Internet are helping to make the world "flat" or a sort of global village. If you lose your baggage on Delta, chances are you are talking to someone in India, if you bought a Dell laptop, chances are that it's an eclectic mix of parts manufactured all over the world, if you need tech help with a Microsoft product, you might find yourself speaking with someone from halfway around the globe. While all these technological advantages offer exciting new possibilities for the future, they also make it so that students graduating from Newport, Norwood, or Campbell County (around here) will have to compete for jobs with students from India, China, or just about anywhere else in the world. This makes our jobs all the more important.

I think motivation is going to be difficult. If I were to try to explain how tough the job market is to an 8th grader, it'd be hard to make him/her understand because their career is still a half of their lifetime away. They won't really enter the job market for probably 6 or 7 more years, or half as long as they've been alive. Convincing them that preparations need to be made now, might be pretty dang tough. But I've worked a job, in fact I've worked several jobs that have been pretty bad, so I know how important finding meaningful employment can be.

As a delivery guy, I might mis-deliver a package and have to drive back and take it to the right address--probably not that big of a deal. The consequences for my new career are much more dire. I'm picturing a "fragile, handle with care," sticker on the forehead of each and every middle schooler in America (and if I get to do a portion of my student teaching abroad, each and every middle schooler in New Zealand, as well).