Here goes nothing...

So I first made this blog for an elementary writing course I took at UGA. My teacher wanted to show us different ways we could incorporate technology into our classrooms. She would have us write a blog post once a week after we had read the assigned readings. I have kept the blog and now at this point of my life I want to use it for personal use.

My life is going through so many changes right now. Every aspect of my life is changing, for the good and for the bad, and I want to document it so that I can look back in the future. Right now I am in a whirlwind of emotions and I can not seem to calm myself down. After getting off the phone with my dad the other day he advised me to keep a journal or record how I'm feeling right now. To both help me put my feelings on paper and to have and look back on and realize how silly I have been for my worries. My dad is an awesome person to talk to. He can always calm me down and always has me look at the positive aspects of the situation and myself to make me see that things aren't so bad off. He truely is the best man I have ever met.

For most of you reading this you already know that I struggle with a bad case of the "worries" I am the type that always thinks something will go wrong or something will not work out. I try to be positive about everything in life but then I always have my worries in the back of my head that keep holding me back. As a child I really really struggled with this. While it has gotten better and I have overcome a lot of fears I feel like it still lingers on with me. To think of how much my life has changed in the past year, two years, and even four is just so crazy to fathom. I have grown so much as a person especially over this past year. I have allowed myself to be independent and learn that I do not need someone to make myself happy. I need to be happy with myself and trust in myself.

Now after all that background info....the reason I am starting to blog is to track my experiences as a student teacher. My anxiety is raging thinking about tomorrow being the start of my last semester of my undergrad and the beginning of my student teaching. I have an awesome mentor teacher and am so so thankful for her. She taught me so much last semester and I know she will do just the same for me this semester. She always has my best interest at heart and shows me how to do things rather then telling me. She always gives constructive criticism on my lessons and shows me ways I can improve or expand on them. Needless to say though I am so scared. Scared I wont be a good teacher. Scared I will not be able to plan my lessons daily. Scared that I will not know how to keep my classroom orderly. Scared that I will not be able to do things on my own without the help of someone else. I want the best for every child and it just scares me that I hold and am responsible for a portion of their lives. I know so many people in which their teacher made the impact on how they felt about schooling. I do not want to be the teacher that the other teachers talk about and look down on.

 I just feel like I am so young and not old enough to have a "big girl job" It is crazy to think that a year from now I will have my own classroom and my own set of children. I will be looking over my class list and they will know me as Ms. Kruger and not just some 23 year old that is scared to death of what the next year will look like. I have attended a top university in the state and my teachers have done a great job at providing me with a quality education and giving me real life examples of things that can be done in the classroom. I have excelled in my classes and will graduate with honors but yet I just still do not feel prepared. I still question myself on how I will be as an educator. I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. It was never a question of what I wanted to be. I have always known hands down that I wanted to be a teacher and that I would be a teacher. But now its passed all of the "What do you want to be when you grow up." I am grown up now and I am here right in front of my door. Now I just need to grasp reality and open that door.

I am hoping after my student teaching process I will feel better and more relaxed on what my life will look like in the next 6 months. Maybe being in the classroom everyday as opposed to two days a week will help me gain more confidence in myself. It's just so crazy to think that my days as a "child" are over. No more little girl, I will soon become an adult with a good job and a house to call a home. I have always just put so much stress on myself to do well and to only do the best that I just do not want to fail at this. The one thing that I have wanted for so long.

Children mean the world to me and I am so excited to build new realtionships with them this semester. I have met so many incredible children along my journey through college being in different classrooms. Each child is special and I want to be the one that helps show them just how special they are.

I'm sorry for rambling on. I promise not all my blogs will be this long. I just wanted to get all my thoughts down and try to sort out some of the jumble going on upstairs in my head. I hope that this blog will be  valuable to me to show myself in 6 months that I am just being crazy and that everything will be ok.

So here goes nothing... Tomorrow morning at 7:15 all my new 5th graders will come into the classroom with smiling faces excited to start their last year in elementary school and I will be prepared with my worries aside so I can give them the best of me that I can. I need to remember that these kidos are probably just as nervous and scared as I am. But it is my job to help them feel calm and safe in the classroom.

Good night everyone :) Hopefully I will fall asleep quick and my nerves wont keep me up any longer!

Wordle of my Blogs!

Didn't realize...

Sorry I thought it was only two twitter responses and not three! Heres my last ones :)

Margots Grandparents Dog Skipper- http://margot3dms.edublogs.org/2011/04/15/skipper/comment-page-1/#comment-225

Fresh and New

Over the past week and a half I have been trying to eat healthier and work out. My roommate Jordan and I have joined Body Plex over on the East side of town. We got a discount due to working at LaFiesta. The owner of Body Plex is a regular at our restaurant and therefore gives all the employess discounts. Every person when first starting off there gets to meet with a personal trainer to go over where they are at and a good goal for the person to achieve by 6 months or 1 year. After meeting with the trainer I realized just how much I had let myself go.

All through high school I was extremely athletic. I ran cross country every fall and played soccer every spring. Come summer time it was time to train for cross country again. There was not a time when I was not working out. I was tone, fit, and in the best shape of my life. Well come college my days of trainning everyday slowly began to dwindle. The stressors of living on my own, being four hours away from home, and my course load made it almost impossible for me to keep up with my scheduled workouts. I also found out that when it is not mandatory to work out, its a lot harder to get yourself out of bed or to decided to take a nap instead of go running.

Well needless to say the pounds have been adding on. While I remain at the same body weight most of my muscle has now turned into fat. People say that muscle weighs more than fat but what they do not realize is that fat takes up 3 times more space in your body. (Hence my steady weight but change in body composition) Most people look at me and think that I am small, but from where I was to where I am now I am not happy for what I have let me body come to.

Going on the second week I have now been eating much healthier! Its so easy with such a complicated schedule to just grab fast food all the time. Now I portion cnotrol myself and make sure to eat every 3 to 4 hours. I do not eat carbs after I work out and make sure that I am drinking plenty of water. I work out with a personal trainer once a week and she plans out my next few works outs for the rest of the week for me to do on my own. I have begun to see results which makes this process so worth the while! I can't wait to see what the next few months will do for me as these past 2 weeks have been so rewarding!

Twitter- #comments4kids

First one (Tsunami in Japan):

http://kidblog.org/MrHuebnersClass/bphipps/what-i-would-do-to-help-all-of-japan/#comment-178

Second one (Junie B. Jones):

http://kidblog.org/MrsFowlers2ndGrade/lily154/thinking-stem-9/#comment-424

An interesting day at work...

Walking into work on Sunday was just like any other day that I have worked. I first went to the UGA baseball game with my family earlier that afternoon. UGA won both games. They played a double header verse LSU due to a rain out the day before.

After the game I went into work and my parents came in to eat. I served them as usual and enjoyed the last hour or so with them before they went back home to Kennesaw. After they left I sat around for a minute. We were never that busy at the beginning on the night. Then I got a party table of 8. GREAT table to get as a first table. Starting the night off with a party table only meant good things for the rest of the night. As I got the tables drink order and walked to the back to make the drinks my manager followed me. He told me that I better take good care of that table if I wanted to get a good tip. Of course I always took good care of my table but who could this party of 8 be? I told him I had planned on it, but ask him who they were. "Mama Sid" of course. Mama Sid, that sounded so familiar...but who was she? ahhhh. Then I remembered. Earlier that month I had eaten at Mama Sid's Pizza off of Barnett. I had noticed all of the pictures on the walls, and soon realized why she looked so familiar. Her husband and she traveled all around the world and had placed some real life photographs in her pizza shop. What an honor to serve Mama Sid!

Once Mama Sid had left, I went back to serving my regular tables. The next table that came my way made my night. Maybe even made my week. My heart was seriously touched after this table and I saw just how important community can be in Athens. My next table was a three top. Two of the three were dressed very nice. It looked like Sunday Church attire, however by 6pm it was too late for morning service and too early for night time service. The third of the guest was an Athens Clarke County Police officer. I walked over to the table, bubbly as ever and greeted them. They were very quiet and seemed almost too mellow. I feel dumb now not connecting the two together, but later on I soon realized they had just left the funeral of the police officer who was shot and killed by Jamie Hood. The way I realized it though was a great way. One of my fellow servers came up to me and told me that their table had requested to pay for my table’s bill anonymously. What a great thing to do to show appreciation to the police officer. Especially doing it anonymously. They were not asking for praise or anything, they just wanted to do something nice for a police officer in their community who was going through a tough time. That was a wonderful thing to be done, however it was only the beginning. On top of that table paying for their bill, four other separate tables also tried to pay for their bill. It really showed me how great community can be and how everyone can pull together in hard times.

My final table of the night was not as powerful or moving. But I did get to serve on of the UGA football players and that was really exciting to me!

My Sunday night close shift turned from bad to good in just a matter of three tables! You never know what the day can bring, so always look at things optimistically!

Writer's Workshop: Chapters 7, 8, & 19

               At the begining of chapter 7 it discusses that teachers need to have a strong presence during writers workshop. The author made a strong connection between worksheets and writing. The author said the same consequence should be given when their writing is not completed as they do when their worksheets are not complteted. I'm not sure how much I agree with that statement however. I feel like if we punish students for not writing they will not like writing. If they are forced to stay in during recess and complete their writing they will see writing in a negative way as a punishment. I feel like as a teacher we need to tell the students that the due date of their paper is *blank* date. All papers must be turned in that day, and not a day later. If they want to waste their time in class not writing then they will just have to write at home if they want to submit their writing on time. Some days students just might not be in the mood to write or not be feelings very creative that day. Everyone has their days, they should not be punished for them but rather just reap the concequences if it's not turned in on the due date. As far as the space in the room goes I loved the idea of lapboards. I remember as a student how much I loved working on the floor. Working on the floor also gives the students plenty of room to spread out and have comfortable space. The students in my mentor teachers classroom have writing pads to use for their drafting. Just like the book said they are yellow and stand out differently than their final drafts on white paper.

               I was interested to read that their are such things as "writer's workshop kits." I agree with the book that I do not feel like they will be as beneficial. I feel like each year the Writer's Workshop will be different based on the children you have in your classroom and the level of writer's they are. If we try to use a kit to do these writers workshop it is almost like looking at the workshop closed mindedly and not allowing your self as a teacher and your students to step outside the box and get creative with writing.

            I can see opposing views on why giving students a date to publish too far in advance can be good and bad. On the good side nothing comes as a surprise to the students. The students are given the publishing dates at the begining of the school year and they know from that point on when their pieces of writing are supposed to be published. This can help students stay organized and plan ahead. On the flip side telling the students these dates this far in advance can overwhelm them and make them feel like they have so much due in that time frame. Depending on how your students seem to organize themselves and stress about subjects I feel like this decision should be made based on the class and not done the same every year. I liket the idea of having students do a refelection of their writing after they publish it. This allows them to look back at their writing process and to see what worked well for them and what did not work well for them. They can use these refelctions to decide what they will do differently next time. This can help them grow as a writer and learn to progress.

Writer's Workshop: Chapters 14, 15, 17

In the writing workshop it is important to conference with your students. I actually get to experience a Writer's Workshop everyday in my field experience classroom. Last week I got to experience conferencing with students on my very own. I was very skeptical when my teacher told me that I was going to conference with the students on my own. I just now learned about a writers workshop and I felt like I was not yet comfortable to do this. After the fact however, it was not as hard as I thought it was. I just listened to the students jumbled thoughts and helped them organize it into paragraph form. They had such great ideas and information they just needed that extra help to shape it all together. One thing I found interesting in the readings however was that the teacher could make a record after conferencing with the students. This record keeps track of who she has met with and can help us view what we are teaching as teachers to help us recognize patterns of what have been taught.

A part of writers workshop that I have not seen yet is the "sharing" time. I am only in the classroom two days a week so I'm sure there are days when they do share but I am just not there to observe it though. The reading gave many great ideas on how students can share their writings with each other. It is a great thing for students to share with one another because they get the opportunity to get ideas from their classmates and think of things that they might not have thought of on their own. Students can do a survey share and just read a single line or main idea from their writings with the class. This sharing method is good because many students will have the opportunity to share. Students can also share their whole writing piece or what they have completed. When students have the ability to listen to one another's ideas this may help them in their own writing pieces. Not all students have to share. Some students may be too shy or may just not feel comfortable sharing about what they wrote about. I can see why some students may not want to share and I do not see anything wrong with that.

In chapter 17 one of my favorite lines in the chapter was, "Most of us don't waste time asking other people questions that we already know the answers to, just to see if they know.." I really liked this line because it is so true. Writing workshop gives us the opportunity to ask personal questions that may not always have an answer. The answer is unknown to the teacher but to the student it may be very evident. The child is then responsible for the answer and it is found within them, and is not right nor is it wrong. Over the course of the writing workshop children have the ability to develop into great writers and a sense of finding them self as a writing can help this process. After the writing process is done the teacher can assess the child on how they feel about them self as a writer. Seeing how a student views them self and comparing their writing to that can help make sense of their progress.

The Writing Workshop: Chapters 9, 10, 13

Now that we have covered just exactly what Writers Workshops are, its time to learn how to place them in action in our classrooms. Through these chapters I learned many important things on how to teach writing workshops in my classroom. Five main points that need to be remembered include: 1) Setting up the room to teach (environment) 2) How we live in that room (demonstration) 3) What we teach in focus lessons and conferences (Direct Instruction) 4) What investigations we plan (inquiry) 5) What we require as writing homework (potential of the world). I found some really interesting points that came from these five topics:

* The environment students are surrounded in inside the classroom should be enough for them to write about even without any instruction

* Writing should not be homework; there does need to be homework in writing workshop but it needs to come from observing the world and gathering ideas

* Ever act we make in our classroom teaches students. We do not have to necessarily write with students but just the act of carrying things such as notebooks shows students that we do write.

* One of my favorite quotes in chapter nine was "If it is a workshop, then all kinds of things need to be in that "shop" that students can work with as they go about their writing." -I like this because how can we expect students to write without giving them the materials necessary to do so.

After we have learned how to teach things we need to go back and look at what to teach. Usually about five different things are taught in a writers workshop. 1) Strategies (ways to do things), 2) Techniques (ways to fashion things), 3) Questions (ways to think about things), 4) Relationships (ways to connect things), 5) Conventions (ways to expect things). From these five topics some interesting things I learned was...

* Some of the best ways for students to learn strategies about writing are to observe past strategies of teachers or past students. Here they can see suggestions and try it on their own.

* We need to teach students important questions to ask themselves as writers that way they can manage their work and think about their writing in a different way.

* For some students connecting their writing to something else in the real world can help them better understand what they are doing as a writer. The relationship the book gave that I liked best was "Learning to read like a writer is like a seamstress visiting a dress shop."

In writing we need to pull students together and allow them to get focused back on the lesson again. Teachers can use an overhead or chart paper to write about the focus lesson. When setting the tone I found it interesting that as a teacher we need to show our students that we are both a writing mentor and a fellow writer. Interestingly enough, writing workshops are usually teacher centered. The teacher does the talking and explaining while the students watch and listen. We can get students involved though is by having them share. Any part that the student can input that lends itself to the lesson is interactive. To summarize and end the lesson as teachers we should look for evidence in students' work of their using the possibilities we are teaching them.

The Writing Workshop: Chapters 1-5

Chapters 1-5

Until reading these chapters in The Writing Workshop I was not familiar with this form of writing for students. In one of our previous classes we did teacher interviews with current elementary school teachers. My elementary school teacher that I interviewed discussed how she used writing workshops to integrate other subject areas into writing. She did not go into much detail about what the writing workshops were she just pointed out that she used them for integration.

The book made me realize that writing workshops can be very benefical to students because it allows them to write freely on their own and experiment with topics that are appealing to their interests. Allowing students the opportunity to write on their own about a topic that interests them is good for them because it allows them to just write without thinking about it too much. Students sometimes may get too caught up in factual information or trying to research information and turn it into a writing that just does not appeal to them. If they are able to chose the subject/topic to research and write about they are more likely to produce a more meaningful piece of work.

Students are given many opportunities to write throughout the day in many subject areas. Many would think that because of this writing workshops do not play a vital role in the day for the student. To many students writing workshop might be a time for them unwind and just relax. Writing for most people is a way to collect thoughts and gather all of the jumble going on inside ones head. For some students the writing workshop might be when they discover themselves as a writer. For the ones that do not enjoy writing because they are forced to write about topics may like this better because they can free write and not be pushed into writing about something they do not enjoy.

I think that writing workshop is something that i would like to incorporate into my classroom. As a student that was not a big fan of writing I feel like I may have liked it better if I was able to free write about other things that I found more satisfaction in.

Ray, K. (2001). The writing workshop: working through the hard parts (and they’re all hard parts). Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English.