Thank You

The last eight weeks have been great. I have learned a lot about communication and how to work with others. I appreciate each and everyone of your posts. I think you are an amazing group of educators that all have something wonderful to offer. The most comforting thing about working with you all has been the realization that I am not as crazy as I thought. We have similar communication issues, but as that weeks have progressed, I see how we have all grown. Keep up the good work! Please visit my blog from time to time and offer your suggestions and advise.

Thank you so much for the last eight weeks. It has been a great journey!

Adjourning

I have never been apart of a group that had a formal adjourning process. I have worked on projects with groups and we have debriefed after one project before moving on to the next project. But these groups were not moving to a place where we are not working together anymore. I have always left groups based off of my own merit. It has been hard to make the decision to leave at times but I find that I have to do what’s best for me. Choosing to leave my student ministries group at church was probably the hardest one to leave. I loved working with the high school and middle schoolers. It was fun because I spend most of my days with little children. I left the group because it was taking me away from actually being in church. I spent so much time with the kids that I never got the chance to go into the church and receive a word. Ministry became another job. I loved it but needed to take care of myself. I needed to be in church and could not find the balance between ministry and personal time. 

I think adjourning from groups is important. When I left the student ministries group at church I did so without much of a fuss. Once we broke for the summer vacation, I just never returned. I do not think it will be hard to adjourn from my colleagues in my masters program. Honestly it it hard to build relationships this way. While I love reading my colleagues posts and respect their opinions on the things I post, I don’t think I will miss it once I no longer have to log onto the classroom assignments. 

Adjourning allows groups to see what they have done well and what they can do in the future to better themselves. This is something that I do while debriefing with my student ministries group. We always allowed these meetings to help make us better. 

3R's

We have recently lost one of our to teachers due to a family emergency. I was confident that her classroom was being ran properly. Her student are always on task, their academic abilities are much higher than the average 3-4 year old, and she was always looking for new ways to encourage their development. When I put a new teacher in her room to work alongside her partner, my assumption was that this teacher will fit right in. Her teaching style was very similar to the one that had just left. I was sadly mistaken. This teacher was not running the classroom correctly, the teacher that left was not following the curriculum properly, her students showed no knowledge of routine or structure. The teacher that she was partnered with is very passive and did not want to get in trouble for saying something. I had to meet with both the new teacher and the partner to ensure that we could get the classroom on task. While I was extremely frustrated I had to apply the 3 R’s this week. I wanted to make sure I was not rude, since the other teacher was well aware that things were not right. I had to make sure I was not disrespectful and that I listened while we completely restructured their classroom. This was a hard process as I worked with the teachers, but I am confident that after our meeting, we have created a plan that will help our children succeed.