15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy

 I came across a blog that had an entry titled "15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy" and I was instantly intrigued. Here's the list in a nutshell, but I encourage everyone to read the original blog entry (provided in the link below.) It has a bunch of little quotes and whatnot, most of which I thought could definitely apply to teaching and students in general!! For the full entry click here.

1. Give up your need to always be right
2. Give up your need for control
3. Give up on blame
4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk
5. Give up your limiting beliefs
6. Give up complaining
7. Give up the luxury of criticism
8. Give up your need to impress others
9. Give up your resistance to change
10. Give up labels
11. Give up on your fears
12. Give up your excuses
13. Give up the past
14. Give up attachment
15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations

Seeing/Hearing Myself Teach

is soooooo weird! Granted, I'm only a Sophomore undergrad, but making this video made my career seem that much closer to a reality. I've had a good amount of experience working with kids and instructing them to a degree through various observations and whatnot, but nothing like teaching my own mini-lesson and having to watch it and hear it for myself afterward. There's always a certain degree of discomfort that causes people to ask themselves, "Do I really sound like that?!" Hah. I suppose that's along the same lines of what was going through my mind as I watched myself teach a fabricated lesson, but most of all I was just impressed with how real it felt. It got me more excited about my future career as a teacher, and helped me familiarize with the field a little better.

Video Lesson

For my video lesson, I plan on introducing a lesson about basic grammar and spelling rules. I am learning to become a high school English teacher, and it drives me absolutely insane when people (even adults!!!!) don't know the difference between "your" and "you're", "there" "their" and "they're", or even "then" and "than." To me, these are all very easy concepts to understand, and we learned them in elementary school, so why are people still mixing them up?! Though there are many other things I could include in this lesson, I am only doing an intro so it will only be a few minutes. Still, it should be fun!

Legal Concerns

I don't really feel informed enough about all the legal concerns teachers have to deal with yet, which actually worries me quite a bit! Just hearing all the different presentations of people speaking about the various court cases made me realize that there are so many legal issues out there for the world of teaching, many of which I'm not even aware of. My biggest concern at the moment is dealing with Special Education children, who have many requirements as far as their learning plans. Working with these children can quickly turn into a big legal mess if their parent feels like I am not providing the most appropriate learning environment for their child, or if they feel the school is not following the IEP or other learning plans made for the child. Aside from that, I know there are a lot of issues with tenure, salary, cutbacks and other various duties as a teacher, which worries me at times, but that constant battle for teachers' rights is just something that comes with the job I believe.