...

the buzz of so many voices inside my head... at times, when i close my eyes and try to rest easy, faces flash under my eyelids, faces of people i've never seen before, somehow transforming in bursts to a thousand other anonymous others... afterimages leaving me breathless...

...

today's lesson went well, by the way. last night, on a whim, i decided to change the lesson plan to make the lesson more "visual." since we have an elmo (an overhead), i decided to draw scenes, characters, and items from the "little red riding hood" story. so after we would read a section of text, i would break out my little drawings and cut outs, and give students a visual reference to what they'd just read... it seemed to work. students seemed really into the lesson. and comprehension seemed to jump through the roof. hell, students were remembering details from the passage that i hadn't really picked up on...

one of the main setbacks of my lesson was the time. i do tend to have an issue with time management, especially when i am trying to cram a lot of stuff into the lesson... i fell short of what i had wanted to accomplish in the lesson plan... i also have to work on incorporating or eliciting responses from ALL the students. i have a few really enthusiastic students who are ALWAYS ready and willing to respond to any questions i may have. because of this, i at times don't get to the quieter kids, to hear what they have to say... but i'm learning.

i LOVE teaching, by the way. i love the excitement that students feel when they are engaged... i feed off of it... i love helping people feel excited about life, i love helping people to feel that their world is, and THEY are, interesting and worthy of respect...

i want to do this forever.