April 19 - Ms. Wilmore, Special Education

Passion Awakened in the Midst of the Storm

As I awoke this morning on day two of being home-bound due to the hazardous storms that have swept through the Houston/Katy area over the past several days, I felt a bit of sadness that today I would not be going to school AGAIN!

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Yes, like most people, I was really grateful for the unexpected “three-day” weekend and used my time off to relax, catch up on some work assignments, and watch documentaries (my favorite past time…weird I know)! But oddly enough, after that first day off, my heart began to yearn for the classroom, to teach and mold the minds of my young learners.

Without a doubt, this extended weekend has once again rekindled my purpose and passion for being an educator. I think being an educator is not just a “job” it is a CALLING. Teaching is something you wake up thinking about and go to bed thinking about. It’s what causes us to spend our “vacations” researching new topics, watching YouTube videos on how to set up a classroom, attending professional development courses, and creating innovative lessons with household items with high hopes that the project will go as well in “real-life” as it did in our heads when we created it!

I wonder if I am the only one who is missing the classroom and the excitement of being an educator at MRE?

Ms. Tiffany Wilmore

April 12 - Ms. Silva, Third Grade

#PositivePostIt Day

After attending the #WGEDD Conference on April 8-9, 2016, I returned back to school with so many exciting ideas and inspired to continue making this school year as great as possible for my students! One of the presenters was Todd Nesloney @TechNinjaTodd, and he encouraged all educators to participate in #PositivePostIt Day on Tuesday, April 12. 

We did a condensed version in our classroom, yet it was amazing for our third graders to write a post-it to celebrate the “awesome” in a classmate and themselves. They quickly finished their post-it about a classmate- from “You are my best friend because you are kind” to “You are great at soccer,” but I think the most powerful part of this experience was the time they took to reflect about themselves. One of the students wrote “I love my handsomeness,” and it was wonderful to see this student who had struggled with self-confidence in the past years write that about himself! Another student, a very quiet girl, wrote that she was awesome at dancing! Imagine our surprise and the encouragement from everyone to soon show us what she knew how to do. Another student wrote about loving her glasses, and this was so important in a classroom where we had a couple of students not wear their glasses because of the insecurity of what others would say about them. “I’m awesome at drawing!” was what another student wrote, and yes he is! Every single post-it they wrote about themselves went on our “Dot Door” where we taped their dots after reading The Dot by Peter Reynolds earlier in the school year.

           

Every day we work on building a classroom where students believe in themselves, and this exercise demonstrated how far we have come this year. I loved #PositivePostIt Day, and it is definitely something that I will continue to celebrate with my students in the future!

Ms. Erika Silva