Winding Down

In one week we will be packing up, ready to leave Houston behind. I'm not going to say that I'm sorry to see it go. There's been a lot of talk here about how we're almost through, and a lot of people seem to have gone on autopilot to cruise through next week. I definently did that, and then last night I started panicking because my laziness was clashing with my perfectionism, and I felt like my lesson plans for next week were terrible. And I wanted to sleep. A little before midnight I was freaking out a little bit, even though I was almost done; but then I talked to Netha, another South Dakota corps member, who was very calmly preparing to stay up later than I have all institute, which she has been doing on a regular basis. That's when I realized how ridiculous I was.

To talk about something rewarding, I feel like I had a bit of a mini-breakthrough the other day with my one student who had been struggling the most. After I handed out some worksheets, she was just sitting at her desk, not working. "Do you know how to do this?" I asked. She didn't. "Do you have the notes I gave to show you how to do this?" She didn't. So I gave her a copy of the completed notes and told her to copy them down. And then for the rest of the period, she worked through the problems based on the notes. It's not going to be enough to catch her up in the next 5 days, but it was nice to see her working hard. Also rewarding was another student today who, after he finished his quiz, called me over because he didn't understand my lecture on rates earlier in the period. Just to see these kids want to learn is nice.