I’m actually rather shocked at how fast this year went by. It seems like just yesterday I was barely doing my student teaching, and here I am a full-time teacher now stationed in Las Vegas.
First things first, some musical logistics. Here are my top 24 songs of the year!
Student Teaching –> Full-Time Teaching: Going from being under the wing of a master teacher to having my own classroom, implementing my own lesson plans, and having my own set of students, it’s been a great year for my professional growth and development. My students at Santiago were challenging indeed, mostly because of the lack of an apparent age difference between me and them. With my Cram students it’s been slightly easier due to me being farther in age from them, and them not knowing me as the “student teacher”. Still, despite all the challenges, I do feel as though I am improving, and if Malcolm Gladwell is to believed, it will take me several years to truly “master” my personal teaching strategies.
Garden Grove to Las Vegas: It’s definitely been both a cultural shift and a hard transition from my hometown to a new city. Often referred to as the “City of sin”, people tell me there that it is really hard to make long-lasting friends due to the transient environment of the city (people come and go). Despite these factors, I have FINALLY started to make some friends I feel comfortable around. I hope to further develop these relationships and establish new connections in Las Vegas in 2015.
Friends & Relationships: With that said, I cherish all my friendships so I hope to maintain as many of them as possible despite the distance. I’m not going to spend too much time on this last topic, since I did already waste 8 months on it – let’s just say romantically speaking I’m right back where I started from the beginning of the year. That being said, I did learn something: don’t settle for someone who won’t give you a straight answer, who’ll string you on for months, and who won’t compromise at all despite all your efforts. I’m sure there’s light at the end of the tunnel if I dig hard enough.
In summary, 2014 was a mixed bag. Professionally I couldn’t be happier. The only problem is now that I’m a teacher I’m not quite sure what the next step is for me. I might want to move back to California but at this point I’m not really tied down by anything so I’ll decide when the time comes.
“Project Health” was a failure in 2014. 2015 will be better. My next “PROJECT” will make that a guarantee.
