Tomorrow, I start grad school. It isn't a traditional graduate school but is rather online like a lot of the new ones are. I've decided to get it in K-12 Curriculum & Instruction with a specialty in ESL, or English as a second language if you're not familiar with educationalese. I'm looking forward to it. A couple years ago I tried to start grad school but was unsuccessful in my pursuit of it. At the time I was really depressed, so I don't know what I was thinking trying to start grad school in that state of mind.
This time however, I'm feeling much better mood wise and much more able to tackle additional responsibilities. Plus the first class is free so I'm going to see how well I'm able to handle it before committing any money to it. This degree should help my teaching significantly I hope; mainly because I think 65% or more of my school's population is ESL. Obviously, a degree specializing in that subject would be beneficial in learning new ideas for how to teach to that population. I think teaching kindergarten will help in that also as I learn more activities that are hands-on based. The hands-on approach is very beneficial for the ESL population; unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to incorporate much of that due to always feeling pressed for time to work on test prep. So while I'm not the craftiest person you'll ever meet, I do look forward to having the students do some hands-on learning and just making learning fun again.
It seems like I lost that ability a little bit when I was teaching 5th grade. My last year in 5th grade I can remember being so angry with my students, and at the same time frustrated that we were cramming 25 of them in a portable which was way too small for them. There wasn't enough space per kid; now they have 2nd and 3rd grade classes out there which is better than 5th grade. The portables are still too small though, even for those grades. For some reason they said it wasn't safe enough to build a building on that part of our property so they decided to just make portables instead. That's another benefit of teaching kindergarten, I get a really big classroom.
In addition to starting grad school tomorrow, I'm also taking a 4 day Kagan Institute at my school district during the first week of August. Kagan is a cooperative learning approach to teaching that I'm really eager to get my hands on and learn how to do better. They base it on a bunch of scientific research that says cooperative learning helps students learn and retain information better, but I think it will just provide more fun for the students in a learning environment. The extra retention is just bonus in my book, particularly for 5 year-olds.
This is going to be a great year I have a feeling, if I can make it past the first couple of weeks. I was talking with a couple of friends yesterday at a birthday party and sharing how every kindergarten teacher at my school had told me the first couple weeks were hell and that I would question why I ever got into the education field to begin with. After that though, hopefully the kids will be used to a new learning environment and not think I'm a big scary monster haha.
I have some strategies for personal development too. I've been lifting weights a lot over the last few weeks, minus this last week. I lift with my good friend Curtis, who is a great guy who used to be in the military and his business tries to help veterans find jobs in the private sector. This past week I took the week off lifting mainly due to Curtis being out of town for business but also because I wanted to start being more serious about cardio and starting on that again. So I ran a couple times last week which was really good and used a couch to 5k program on my phone. It's been really helpful, although now I can't maintain my speed for the lengths of the runs anymore so I have to slow my speed down to where I'm still running but just not as fast as I was. I was running 8mph for the lengths of my runs, now I do 8mph for the first minute and a half and then knock it down to 6mph for the last minute and a half of the runs. This week I hope to combine weights and cardio, doing one or the other every day but Sunday. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I'll lift and then on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I'll do my couch to 5k program. Running burns a ton of calories, particularly when you weigh as much as I do.
There's room for much improvement in my diet as well, but instead of trying to make a ton of changes all at once and failing miserably, I'm going to try to focus on one change at a time, and fail miserably that way instead, haha, hopefully not. I think it will give me a better chance if I focus on one thing at a time and then try and incorporate other changes as I go along. My friend pointed out that I had gained weight the other day and we were talking about it today - how it's so hard to gain control of your weight in American culture. Everywhere you turn there is awful food that is cheap and easy to eat and we drive everywhere. I lost 30 pounds when I went on my round the world trip and as of now have gained back 20 pounds of that already. Can you believe that?! 20 pounds in 3 months! Who does that?! Hopefully with throwing some cardio in the mix that will help me lose some weight or at least not gain anymore. The diet will have to change too for me to see any real loss, but like I said before, one thing at a time.
My parents are both incredible self-disciplined in most areas of their lives, not sure where I fell off the wagon. I do have some self-discipline in a few areas I suppose, I just need to increase the amount of areas by about ten-fold and I'd be doing okay. No one is perfect of course, but that's also an excuse a lot of people give for not doing anything to change their current behaviors, whether that be in taking care of their bodies or how they manage money or whatever. A couple weeks ago I listened to a podcast sermon by Matt Chandler that said discipline comes from love, not love comes from discipline, referring to the spiritual life. His point was that people need to focus their attention on their love of God and then discipline will come from that, not the other way around. I thought about that for a while, and have to disagree a little bit. To start, I would totally agree that initially love leads to discipline. But if you then take that discipline and apply it to studying Scripture or praying more, then I think your love of God can increase from that as well, and you have a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious one.
Geez, guess I had a lot to write about. As I sat down to write this blog, I didn't think I really had anything to talk about. Just get me started though, and I'll go on and on. Hope you enjoyed it!
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