Decisions, Decisions

I love culture.

 Language, architecture, even art (sometimes -- on a good day). Visiting new places has been something that I have grown to love over the past few years. I believe that God has placed this passion on my heart and it's a love that I have been cultivating for a while now. Anyway, as my fellow Trinity classmates began their final journey here at college, I chose to take one last interim course -- to Italy!

While they were observing, learning names and teaching first lessons, I was exploring the streets of Venice, visiting cathedrals in Florence, standing beside the leaning tower of Pisa, and eating pasta in Rome.

That trip taught me a lot about history, culture, language, art, communication, leadership, cuisine, and especially about the importance of community.

Needless to say, by the time I returned to the United States, I was a little bit behind in Student Teaching. Since then, though, I have successfully completed my first day of training at Elim Christian School, the school for students with disabilities at which I will be spending the first seven weeks of student teaching.

Training was interesting but primarily consisted of topics that I already knew a lot about such as touring the building and becoming a mandated reporter for abuse. I'm excited to continue training this week and learn more about Elim, the procedures used there, and especially my class and cooperating teacher.

So I love traveling and I really love learning about new cultures and places, but I'm really excited about moving forward and starting my student teaching placement. It's going to be hard work and challenging in ways I have yet to experience, but I can't wait to see what kinds of opportunities God will provide for me in the next few months. And, I can't wait to see how God will use my passion for culture to impact and teach my students. According to the Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 3 Diversity 3, effective teachers understand "how student learning is influenced by individual experiences, talents, and prior learning, as well as language, culture, family, and community values."

This next (and final) semester at Trinity will be the most important for me in many ways. I will be learning new things every single day and working extremely hard to plan lessons and develop new ways to engage my students in the material introduced to them. However, I've decided to view these next seventeen weeks with a positive attitude. After all, with each new experience all you can really do is live and learn.

And I think I'm going to decide to look forward to that process.

C'est la vie!