Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Day Twenty-nine: Dreams deferred

Today I saw my cell phone go off during my conference period, so I answered. It was the last call I expected. It was from a school in NYC, wanting to interview me to teach drama at a K-8 public school in Brooklyn. Six months ago, that was my dream, the biggest dream I could imagine. Today that dream was directly in front of me... and I turned it down. I have a job. It's a hard job. But it became my new dream. And I couldn't imagine leaving these kids. My last class could tell something was up, so I told them the truth. "You should take it!" they shouted. I told them I couldn't. So many people have let them down and left them. I was not going to do the same thing.

This morning I bought some mini-peanut butter cups. The plan? Give them to students that were in their seats when the bell rang. Seemed to catch a few students attention. Hopefully I can start them building a better habit when they don't know if there is going to be a reward. Plus I wanted to put them in a good mood because they actually had to take notes today on color theory. I think the candy made them want to fight me less about it? Only two students all day didn't take notes, so I think that's a pretty successful day.

No comments:

Post a Comment