Raegan Shaw Blog Post #7: Chapter 12

One part of this chapter that I fell in love with was the page about making time for personal and professional reading.  I had not realized until I read this page how often I neglect reading.  For a while, I felt like I read all the time for plans, this course, and so on, but I did not realize how nice it is to sit down and read this chapter.  It's even more nice to read a personal book on my own spare time.  I can totally relate to teachers not "having time," yet I guess I have more time than I think.  I need to spend more time making time for reading.  I loved this page especially because it reminded me of the last D6 University that I went to this year.  One of the literacy coaches there, that was teaching a class to us, asked us to spend about 20 minutes reading a novel from her table.  In that moment, I was for the first time in years asked to drop everything I was doing and read.  At that point, I had no excuse.  As if only seconds later, she asked us to stop reading.  I looked up and it was time to answer questions on our book.  Words cannot describe the happiness I felt from reading that book for even that short amount of time. I was so lost in it that for moments, I forgot my responsibilities and worries that I constantly carry on my shoulders as an adult.  Reading has the magic that takes us away from our problems, thoughts, and worries.  Not to mention, it makes you smarter! This is exactly what I want to teach my students.

This chapter has also made me feel more at peace with my bad timing.  I realize now that most teachers struggle with timing and efficiency and that we all just need to take a big breath and figure it out!  I definitely need to work on being more efficient and wasting less time during the school day.  Maybe this summer I will sit down and think a lot of my daily routines through and find ways to improve them.  From all that I read in this chapter, the part that spoke to me most was the part about building in time to reflect.  I was asked to do weekly reflections with student teaching and clinicals, and I loved it.  Even though it was a lot of writing and something extra to do, I appreciated the fact that reflections were assigned and mandatory because each time I wrote one, I felt better about my career, even if my reflection was somewhat negative.  I feel that next year, I am going to start a notebook or even a word document and reflect each week, if not each day, about my practice.  I'd like to see how much daily reflecting helps now that I have a real teaching job.