Summer Learning

Throwback post from Learning About Learning, a previous blog about my journey through post-secondary education.

Well, I'm not at school now, but I'm still learning.

It never stops.

I interact with kids. I visited my school where I will be doing my first practicum. I think. I read. I think some more.

So... some of my thoughts from the summer:

• upon visiting my upcoming practicum school: I am so excited for this opportunity.The school isn't perfect. I'm sure my experience won't be perfect, and I won't be a perfect student teacher, but the possibilities, the hope of the experience, is so much fun to look forward to. I so much enjoyed talking to the principal and my teacher. We talked about character education - my school board is focusing on character traits again (something that is more and more neglected in schools now), we talked about playing to teachers' strengths, and we talked about cultivating unity in a school as opposed to individualism. 

My take away - these people that I had the opportunity to interact with have so much experience, and I have an incredible opportunity to learn from. I am blessed.

• upon ... reading my Bible, listening to a sermon, and thinking. Something really on my mind has been the command to love the least of these. It's a topic that will probably appear on my other blog as well at some point, but for now I'll relate it just to my future vocation. The Bible talks a lot about 'the least of these. Jesus, specifically, uses the term. He talks about not making them stumble. About not forbidding them to come to Him. About how loving them is like loving Him ("For whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me.") What an opportunity we have, as future educators, to do this? To love those that are seen as not old enough, not mature enough, not smart enough... Jesus takes the treatment of kids seriously I think - What you have done for these, you have done for me. Wow. Big responsibility. Big opportunity. 

My take away - God takes this seriously. As teachers, not only do we teach them their ABC's and their 1,2,3's, but we learn their family life, their view of themselves, if they are bullied, if they are popular...  We have the opportunity to not only teach them 'academia,' but to speak truth into their lives about who they are and how God has made them. Wow.

I think this constantly-learning-thing is something I love most about how God created life. I never know everything. Frustrating sometimes, but also beautiful. Life is only ever boring then if I allow it to be. I must keep my heart and mind open to what God wants to teach me. This includes in my future vocation, as I will never know everything there is to know about teaching or about children or about learning, but I will always be learning more - even in the summer when my brain seems to want to say 'adios!'