Good Things Sunday

    I follow a lot of blogs… blogs written by educators… blogs written by administrators…. blogs written by friends/family… but one of my favourite blogs to see pop up in my Feedly account is One Good Thing. This collaborative blog, is a space where educators share stories of good things from their day.

     Teaching is a profession that can leave you overwhelmed, exhausted, and questioning if you are doing anything right. As this blog states, however, “Every day may not be good, but there is one good thing in every day”. I love reading the stories from other educators and have been inspired to share my own version of “one good thing”. Each Sunday, I’d like to reflect on the previous week and share some good things:

– I have a student who started with us two weeks after Term Two began.
  This student has only attended 2 days since I’ve met them, is terribly shy,
  and I’ve been swamped trying to figure out how to keep them on track without
  overwhelming them. One assignment we’ve been working on involved
  flipping a coin to determine the genotypes & phenotypes of a potential
  “alien offspring”. Wanting to learn more about my student, however, I
  asked to play rock-paper-scissors in lieu of flipping coins. Each round my
  student smiled a bit more & was laughing & talking more by the time class
  was done. Will I see them more frequently this week? I don’t know… but
  progress has been made.

– After explaining a new concept to my Grade 8s I was met with silence
  and stares, which is odd for this group. I asked, “Are we silent because I’ve
  lost you or are we silent because we understand and have no questions?”
  Without missing a beat a student piped up, “I’m quiet because I’m content
  with all the knowledge you just provided me with!”

     What good things happened in your week?