...and finally!

This is my final post about teaching from an undergraduate, pre-teacher standpoint. I'm not sure whether I'll blog in the future about my teaching experiences, as the idea of putting my thoughts on the web still freaks me out a bit. But as the semester finishes, I can certainly say that my perspective and comfort level about teaching are entirely different from when I began in January. I am still intrigued by the challenge of the teaching world and excited about the ways I will grow as a person when I start teaching, but now I feel much, much more prepared to teach and it is no longer an abstraction in my mind but rather a concrete career that I understand. No matter how long I teach for, these invaluable lessons that I have learned and research-based approaches will be swirling through my head, and I hope that I do not annoy my future children's teachers by my interest in how they teach my children!

Looking back on the semester, I realize how intense and challenging it was at times and how little I actually enjoyed all of the lesson-planning, but there is still a part of me that senses that teaching is what I was made to do, and I hope that as I grow in my experience as a teacher I will truly be able to make my teaching metaphor a reality. If teaching is like a gourmet grocery store, I want to introduce children to the expansive and fascinating world around them, the colors, the sights, the scents, the sounds... for those who come from homes where none of this has been available to them, I hope to see their eyes begin to sparkle a little bit as they experience new things and realize they LOVE to learn. And in elementary school, children get the opportunity to learn so many life things, like what a fresh peach tastes like or why they understand exactly how the character in their book feels, or that they are in fact GREAT at dancing or singing or basketball. I was just sitting under the shade of a gorgeous leafy green tree this afternoon by the Rotunda and talking with a friend after we finished our very last exam, and we talked about how much we love learning, learning of all kinds, especially learning we don't have to demonstrate through taking a test. This has come from a long history of great teachers, engaging experiences, and challenges of all sorts. I realized from that conversation today that my aim in teaching extends far beyond the classroom. I sincerely hope that some student of mine some day somewhere will sit under a green leafy tree and think back on all his or her learning experiences and say, "I LOVE to learn."