One-third of the way done!

“Those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed”.  -Proverbs 11:25

I went to First Friday this week and bought an awesome whale bag from a local artist! SPIKE! :)

I realized something this week- if I graduate on May 1st (which is the tentative plan right now- we will have to see how my summer classes pan out!), I only have 6 months of this program left. I am ⅓ of the way there! It feels like it has been a lot longer than three months because I have learned and done so much! I am happy I have six more months left to continue learning and growing.

A few cute and joyous things from this week:
Kindergartener Hugs. I love that I’ll just be standing somewhere- in the music room, in the cafeteria, in the hall- and all of a sudden, a tiny person will come up behind me and wrap their little arms around me. I also love when these kinders tell me I am “the best teacher ever” when I don’t even lead their class!

Kindergarteners’ Perception of Words. I was talking to a kinder who was waiting in the hall during violin class because he had been squirmy when he was lining up to enter the room, and Lorrie told him he could only come in when he was ready to have self-control and take proper care of his violin. What was so cute is this little one has giant green eyes with super long eyelashes, and he had the saddest look on his face with his big, doughy eyes. But what topped it all off was instead of saying “Ms. Heagy”, when he explained what happened, he called her, “Ms. Piggy”. So he kept looking around with his distraught frown, saying “Ms. Piggy told me I had to wait out here”...

Uplifting emails. A joyous thing came from a Christian blog post I receive through email. Each entry is a new topic that is based on scripture and the author’s, Holley Gerth, personal experiences. Her posts are brief but powerful and are the perfect encouragement to get me through the day in a successful way. She recently wrote a post about how when we focus on receiving affirmation, approval, or applause, we actually block ourselves from being able to cherish those things or any other good thing. But when we focus on giving- taking the gifts and abilities we have and sharing them with others- we actually receive much more of those good things ourselves. This is a simple message, but it inspired me this week. I focus a lot on how well I am doing and how much I am learning and how much better I am becoming at teaching, that I forgot that I am already capable of giving a lot of love and care to these kids now! It helps me re-focus on why I am here, and it also takes some of the pressure off- instead of just focusing on my performance, I am focusing on the greater, deeper purposes for why I teach and why I am here: to be the light of Jesus in the context of the classroom.

Beyond that, I have definitely had a busy couple weeks, which was hard because I also got sick again last week! But I am proud of myself because I was presented with a few extra challenges last week, and I stepped up to the bat and knocked it out of the park.
First of all, I had to unexpectedly take over a lesson when Sophia had to leave and run an urgent errand for JAMM during the class she was going to teach! So Lorrie and I split the lesson in half, which was a decision we made 2 minutes after class started. And it went really well!

We also had our JAMM “informance” that showcased all our JAMM classes for the parents this Wednesday. I played the drums (have I ever played the drums? NO!) with my bass students for their showcase piece, and I also had to take over a presentation on SmartMusic that was supposed to be given by a colleague who got sick. What was funny was, I was still getting over being sick and had temporarily lost my voice (AGAIN- thankfully it is already coming back!), so I sounded awful and didn’t feel great when I stood up in front of hundreds of parents and demonstrated how SmartMusic works, but I wasn’t even nervous!

The third big step this week was I substitute-taught for Lorrie the day after the informance without a voice. I was definitely a little nervous for how that would go, but my lessons went well and the kids were very gracious to me! I think I gained some pity, which helped. :P
I was proud of myself for being willing to tackle so many challenging things this week!

I also wanted to highlight some fantastic techniques I have learned from my mentor teachers, Tyree and Lorrie, the past three months. Both of them are avid supporters of Michael Grinder , an author and educational researcher with expert advice about using non-verbal communication in the classroom. As I have now taught classes without a voice multiple times, I know it is possible to give any and all directions with just a nonverbal cue (whether it’s “Mouths closed”, “Eyes on me”, “Sit criss-cross applesauce”)- it’s all about establishing those patterns and making them consistent. I have also learned that some kids will try to distract me by randomly calling out or coming up to me during class. Even though my natural urge is to address every person and question, it’s often best to not give them eye contact and just point to where they should be or just ignore the question. It works miracles and keeps the class going! Lorrie has also shown me that a great way to discourage misbehavior is to encourage the good behavior directly near the student who is misbehaving. Without giving any eye contact to the child who is disrupting class, I might say, “*Insert name here*, thank you so much for showing such great self-control and respect by staying focused on the learning, even though a friend next to you is trying to bring you down to his or her level.” It’s often another miracle-worker because it motivates the whole class, including the misbehaving child, to be more engaged! There are so many other things I have learned, from scaffolding, to presenting lessons with a “hook” to get students interested, to having a credible voice and body. They all make such a difference.

I also cut off a bunch of my hair to let it
naturally curl and make my morning routine
go faster, and I'm still trying to figure out
how I feel about it!!

This week will be another busy one in a different way: parent-teacher conferences are the first two days of the week, and then we have Wednesday off for Veterans Day. The quartet and I will be having long meetings to plan for the rest of the semester and prepare for upcoming fundraising events, though! As another week begins and Thanksgiving comes upon us (which I still have no plans for, by the way! Hopefully I’ll figure out whose dinner to crash soon :P), I hope we can all take a moment to stop and think of the joyful things in life- the things we have learned, the fears we have conquered, the dreams we have entertained, the relationships we have invested in, the wonderful things in life we have experienced.

And remember- you are capable of being refreshing to someone.