Transition Time: Celebrating our Student Teachers

Tonight we had a special event for our Teacher Preparation Program. Our club for pre-service teachers, the Future Active Christian Teacher (FACT) Club put on a banquet. This was a first time event, but I hope that we'll continue to have this in the future! The FACT Club leadership is pretty incredible, and a few months ago they proposed hosting all of the cooperating mentor teachers, the student teachers, the Education faculty, and--of course--all of the FACT Club members for an evening of celebration.

Wow, this was fun! Good food, good conversation, good opportunities to get future teachers, practicing teachers, and Education faculty together in a "not school" setting. Dessert was delicious too, of course...

Thank you, Dordt Dining, for always having my favorite chocolate lava cake...

And we had an inspiring speaker--the superintendent from a Christian school in our area--and several of the students offered words of thanks to the different groups represented there tonight.

I was asked to give a share some words of congratulations for our seniors who are in a time of transition: wrapping up this stage of their journey, and preparing to move into the next adventure...a classroom of their own!

Knowing I'm likely to go off the rails if I just ad lib, I wrote out my thoughts. What follows is what I shared as a blessing and send off for our seniors. This is one of those times when I feel like, "I get to do this!"

The People are the Work

It's a crazy week for me.

I was out of town last week, so I'm playing catch up on marking papers.

I've had a bunch of extra meetings for different committees and commitments.

It's registration season for the next semester, and advisees are coming out of the woodwork to ask me to weigh in.

Visiting student teachers, keeping up with my two students working on independent study projects, and--oh yeah--I have classes to teach(!) means it's a full, full week.

And then, a student stops by, and just asks if I have a few minutes to talk.

So, with a bit of an internal sigh, I put a smile on my face and turn away from my laptop, gesture toward the ramshackle little couch I have in my office, and turn in my chair to give her my full attention, even as I think to myself, "I have things to do..."

This junky little couch moved in to this office the same day I did.