Goodbyes

Guest post from Calgary Science School student teacher, Mariana Sanchez.

(Cross posted on Mariana's blog)

December 2nd was my official last day as a student teacher. The last day was a total whirlwind! I felt like I was running all over the place trying to get our last minute labs organized while I was trying not to focus on the fact that it was our last day.

It’s so hard to think that I won’t get to go to the school everyday. The group of students went from being a group of kids to my kids. I’ve grown attached to all of them and I will miss them! If I had any doubt about being a teacher I now have 50 extra reasons of why I want to keep teaching. Having the ability to inspire someone to push themselves to excellence or to get them to keep going when they want to give up is something not to be taken lightly. To have a student say that I’ve made their day, is amazing. It’s not something that I can just walk away from.

As much as I taught them about algebra and integers-they taught me about patience and acceptance. They waited calmly as I sometimes stuttered and fumbled through material. I will always remember my very first lesson when I said I was nervous and they all started to clap for me, and told me I would do just fine. I got the impression that they were thinking, ‘we’ll make a teacher out of you, don’t worry.’ The students were so encouraging after the first couple lessons and would tell me I did a good job and that they learned something (even though I’m pretty sure it was a review)

It will be hard to leave the school community too. The whole staff was supportive of us. When we were having questions about assessment one of the teachers started a “Lunch and Learn” where we could bring any questions about school and she would help us work through them. We had questions about portfolios and social networking and got a crash course in how to set up Twitter and Blogs. I had a question about how to use algebra tiles and we got a mini tutorial. Even when we were trying to write our proposal for a conference coming up we got extra help and got ideas from the conversations we were having in the staffroom. I felt like everything was open to us and they didn’t hold back any knowledge from us. This had a huge impact on my experience this year!

I am glad that I can keep volunteering in different areas at the school. The only hard part will be trying to balance this with my own classes and work. I don’t think I’m quite ready to leave the school yet and the learning/teaching environment they have built. There is still more learning to be done!