Gooooooooooooooals

In the game of teaching, does this matter more?

or this?

Or this?

I watched a World Cup game yesterday. I can't tell you who any of the teams in the above pictures are. But I certainly noticed what scenes made up most of the programming. It wasn't the scenes of winning - those came at the end.  No, the small advances, the blocks that prevented the other team from scoring, and the fans' reactions made up the bulk of the camera shots. There were also many shots of injuries on the field and quick recoveries. The analogy is that this blog will have its share of conflicts and resolutions, tangents, indulgences and drama. It will probably often be the recipient of stress release. And spectators, I need your feedback, in the comments.

In short (and many posts will be short and simple, a key principle to excellent teaching), this is my journal of moving onward - sometimes I'll stumble, under and overestimate, miscommunicate, miscalculate, hyperventilate, erupt, and neglect - but I'll be moving nevertheless. It is how I'll become a teacher.

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...slightly longer introduction, if this is still interesting to you:

Just like teaching, it's ideal to start off with what I want to accomplish in this endeavor. Well, I want to keep notes - some more cohesive than others - of my first year of teaching, beginning now, the summer before AUGUST 25 (the first first day of school).

On this blog, I want the reader to:
-be interested. and keep reading.
-to assume some parts of the blog are just for me, and not try to decipher or care about everything I write. Usually the stuff with pictures are for you :)
-re-live yet read more than just narratives of my experience: synthesis, artistry, prose, fantastical ideas and proposals

I plan to reflect. Boring? But as an English teacher, I must discover how reflection is useful for the writer by doing it myself. I want to reflect on my plans for the kids and how they actually played out in order to figure out what I learned [teacher mode]. I will also reflect on the institution of teaching [teacher educator mode]. I hope the reader will enjoy both.

My grandest objective is to grow - in real life and right before your very eyes on this blog. Growth is, after all, happiness, and the reason that is hard to recognize is because growth doesn't always feel good.  The thrill is the journey, chase, and climb - NOT being at the summit, finish line, goal (Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project).  Don't get me wrong - I think there will be victories and concrete milestones. But I'll continue past them, a brief hiatus, a touchdown in a loooong football game filled with yards gained and lost (yup, a sports analogy. Please don't think I know anything about sports. The analogy was adapted from Matthew Johnson's Finding Success the First Year).  But maybe this blog will actually help me notice, track, and celebrate growth as I stumble, under and overestimate, miscalculate, hyperventilate, erupt, and neglect this year.

One more note. I read other teacher blogs, since the cliché advice is to keep a log of your first year teaching. I read mostly the ones that have the blogspot address I wanted (teacherdiary, iwillcontinue, firstyearteacher, teacherblog). Many seemed to have the spirit of a student forced to do what he/she should: a passable attempt, but really not intrinsically motivated, and ultimately abandoned. So a simple goal is to just keep doing it, get something down, even one sentence, and make it meaningful and authentic (Rubin again, her one-sentence diary).  A simple goal - such goals really are the secret to teaching - is to go onward, teach. (yeah this is the blog URL I finally settled on that was unclaimed. Somewhat unoriginal, but so are most students' titles. I'll talk more about the importance of inhabiting their shoes).

Thanks for reading through this first, semi-experienced post. If you liked it, you'll like the rest, and it'll only get better as I warm up my blog-writing skills. Stay tuned :)