Archive for August, 2008
Kindergarten
Who really remembers their Kindergarten teacher anyway? You are 4 or 5 years old and you come to school so you can play in the sandbox, and climb on the monkey bars. Can a Kindergarten teacher really have any effect on their students at that young of an age?
I have been thinking a lot lately about how lost our teenage world seems. When Jon and I were at my parents house last night, my mom came home at 11:00pm fuming. She had just driven by some kid getting the crap kicked out of him across from a local elementary school. When she stopped and backed up, everyone ran away… including the kid. The week I wrote my post about teen girls, was the same week I dealt with a lot of issues with a couple of the teen girls I know. What is happening to our teenagers? The reason I am connecting Kindergarten with teenagers is because I am questioning my choice of grade levels to teach. I am specializing in Pre-K to 3 but is that where I should be? My heart is definitely for young children. I love how they learn and how they begin to understand things, but I am beginning to think that if I really want to have an effect on students, I should teach high school, or a higher grade where they may need a little bit more guidance.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that my job as a teacher is not to “fix” students. I don’t have the power to make choices for them or deliberately pursuade them to act a certain way… but I CAN see with my own eyes that a lot of the teens I meet need help, support and love. I know young children also have issues that need help and support, but the teenagers of today were three years old once! Does a Kindergarten teacher really make a difference?
No matter what grade I teach, my job and passion is to educate. I want to educate my students about maths, sciences, language and grammar, but I also want to educate them about life, love, relationships and society. Right now I don’t plan on changing what I want to specialize in, and as of this September 08 I will be pre-interning in a Pre-K class, but these past couple weeks have sure opened my eyes to see that there are some other options open for me if I want to take them.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Teen Girls
Suicide, rape, drugs, alcohol, sex. These are normal words now a days. WHY?!? What kind of impact to we as teachers, youth leaders, parents and friends have on the teenagers we are in contact with? Sometimes I feel like no matter how much we care for them, or instruct them, or warn them, they still fall into trouble. When we send kids to high school, we are sometimes sending them into a waiting death trap. There is so much crap in high schools these days it makes me sick. It breaks my heart to know that beautiful young teenage girls can get walked all over by high school guys who think they have the right to do whatever they want. It makes me sick that rape is more common than we think. It makes me sick that drugs and alcohol are the NORM in high schools today. It makes me sick that majority of high schools kids can probably name one person they know who has been killed before the time they reach age 20.
Where have we gone so wrong? What can we do to fix any of this? The cheerleaders I coach, the youth group girls I work with all face the same issues… self confidence, pressures of sex, the pressure to drink. Don’t get me wrong, these were all issues I faced in high school as well, but why do they seem to be so much harder to overcome now then they were even 5 years ago?
I want teen girls to know that they are SO valuable. I want them to know that they are made in the image of God and that they are worth something! I want them to know that they don’t have to be physical with guys to be accepted. I want them to know that the way they live their life can make them unique… NOT the crazy shirt they wear to try and make a statement.
I am going to try and be an example to the teen girls I come in contact with and I pray that God will do a mighty work in high school girl’s lives.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )How the Wii Can Ruin a Marriage
Don’t worry, Jon and I are not getting a divorce. Our marriage is fine, but let me tell you about a little gaming console that I am sure is ruining marriages around the country… It’s called the Wii… Jon’s groomsmen went in together to buy Jon a Wii for his bachelor party. At first, this seemed like a really cool and expensive gift. I soon realized the horrors that come with it. It seems that Jon has this obsession with video games which I didn’t fully realize until we got married. His friends gave us Wii games as wedding gifts and the first three months of marriage I have been learning how to deal with his zoned out stare at the TV. We deliberately didn’t get cable because we heard some marriage advice that it is best if you learn how to talk and communicate with each other for the first year rather then letting Tv take away your together time, but I feel like we might as well have gotten cable because Jon spends even more time in front of the Tv then if we would have had cable.
My expectations are that when Jon comes home from work we can have a nice evening together where we relax and spend time with one another. Jon somewhat understands my view, but his view of relaxing when he comes home from work is sitting and playing Wii. This absolutely drives me crazy because I want to talk to him and talk about how our days went…. and he wants to play Wii. I mean I’ve played the Wii before, it’s a fun game, but hours playing it? How can guys do it? It is a fact that the Wii has caused more fights in our marriage thus far then anything else. Now you have to say, that’s ridiculous!
Another thing I don’t appreciate is the shooting games. Jon had bought this shooting game and one day I watched the little movie intro to the level he was about to play. It was imitating World War 2 and Jon was on the team that was going and killing the Germans. I had big issues with this. I lived in Germany for a year, so when I saw Jon shooting and being part of it, yes, I actually started crying. Don’t worry though, Jon was too enthralled with his game to notice!
Anyways all that being said, I love Jon to death, and I have learned to understand his love for video games… but I definitely think the Wii should have a Warning on it before you buy it that says Warning: may cause marriage problems!
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