A fresh start

This week was the first week of the new semester. What doest that mean?  Well, it means that, although I still teach the same kids, they have all moved to be in different class periods. I'm still trying to get used to the new dynamics (especially when you put "loud-student-from-period-1", "loud-student-from-period-5", and "loud-student-from-period-7" into the same class period. Yup, my new crazy class is 5th and 6th period because all my yapper students are condensed into those 2 class periods. I actually feel really bad once again for the good students. I had one girl come up to me and say, "Ms. Mayans, this class is so talkative. I don't know if I like it." It is so frustrating for me to see students robbing their peers of their opportunities to really learn and enjoy learning just because they can't seem to find the self control to stop talking.

Well, the change isn't all bad, and I love seeing my students interact with each other in new ways as they get comfortable with these new classes. This week we went over rules and procedures again, introduced prefixes and suffixes, and talked about the difference between fact an opinion in anticipation for our unit on persuasive/argumentative writing. I think it will be a very busy (and hopefully fun) term.

So another surprise came my way this week. My BYU professor, Dr. Coombs, sent me an email this week asking me if I would like to work with her and a few other new teachers on a proposal for NCTE. NCTE is the "National Council of Teachers of English" and they have a conference every year where teachers from across the country meet and teach each other the great things they have done in education. This year's theme is "(Re)Inventing the Future of English." Basically, my professor wanted us to talk about how we have taken a classic text that has been taught in classrooms for years and changed the way we have taught it so that it relates to our students better. Let me tell you, it was an exciting yet intimidating invitation to work on this proposal. Once again, I will admit that I went to Dr. Coombs' office and shed some tears as I told her how to felt like an impostor teacher and inadequate to the task. But I will also admit that I have an awesome mentor in Dr. Coombs and she helped calm my nerves and remember all of the good qualities I have as a new teacher. It is so hard for me, but I need to stop comparing my weaknesses to the strengths of others. Anyway, we brainstormed some ideas and wrote up the proposal with the other ladies who are participating. If our proposal is accepted, we will be presenting in the national conference in November in BOSTON! Woo hoo! It would be such a great experience. We will just have to wait and see what comes of it.