High School and Life Changing Experience

          My junior year in high school I took this class called Children’s Literature.  In this class we learned how to read books to children.  I learned the importance of practicing books before you read them to the kids.  Kids love when you do different voices for different characters, but that takes practice.  There are two different approaches to reading a picture book.  I remember loving this as a child.  You can show the students the pictures while you read it or you can have students form a picture in their own minds and then show them the picture.  Every Monday we would go to the local elementary school and go and read to the kids before they went to school.  This was one of my first experiences with kids in a school setting.  This made me want to become a teacher even more.  These kids where so excited about books.  They were really engaged with the books. Our final project in this class was a study on a author.

            This school year I was able to see kids listening to books again.  I work in daycare with preschool age kids.  After I was done with work I would go directly to my field work classroom, which was at the kindergarten level.  The amount of growth that kids make between preschool and kindergarten is crazy.  I would read books to both groups of kids and you could see how much they grow.  Many of the preschoolers had a hard time to sitting through the whole book.  The kindergartners would ask questions throughout the whole book.

My Dog

             We got my dog, Maisie when I was nine years old.  She has been around for more than half of my life.  She is a yellow lab and loves people.  Cats scare her, which is funny because all the dogs you see on t.v. are scaring the cats.  Her hair stands up on her back when she is scared.  I know this is going to sound weird, but my dog is really positive.  She is always happy and inspires me to be.  When I come home from college she has the best greeting.

            The week I came home for the summer my mom text me that Maisie would not stand up.  She is thirteen now.  My parent took her to the vet they think she has spinal damage.  She got acupuncture.  I did not know this existed for dogs, but it really seemed to help her.  She is on a lot of pills right now, but she does not mind because she takes them with peanut butter.  The time of the day when she is most animated is meal times.  Watching her walk makes me want to cry because she keeps slipping. 

            Last summer I worked in a day care and mostly in the baby room.  When I got home I would tell Maisie that she is my baby.  When I was eleven I taught her to sit and lay down.  Sometimes she mixes them up.  She loves to have her ears rubbed.  She also loves car rides.  When she was younger she would hop up into the driver seat when we were in the store.  She rode in the car when I was first learning to drive.  She is one brave dog.  She is hilarious when she goes swimming because she always forgets to hold her head up and she swallows water.   She hates baths, but sometimes she can get pretty stinky.  She gets pretty mad at my mom if she has to get a bath.  I love when my mom brings her in the car to pick me up.  She usually rolls done the back window, so when I come out I can see my panting dog smiling at me.   

Friendship

            I have been thinking about friendship a lot because graduation is coming up at my school.   Friends bring a lot of things to your life; they surprise you, they disappoint you, they lift you up, they make you giggle, they teach a new thing, they will let you down, and best of all they love you.  During the summer I don’t get to see my friends because I live far away from school, but I usually keep in contact with them.

One of my good friends is graduating next week.  She only came into my life last school year, but she has made a big impact on my life.  She has become a role model in my life.  She is an education major just like me.  Her dream is to be a preschool teacher.  She gives me really good advice on what classes to take.  She works really hard and gave up every summer to take classes.  Trust me taking summer classes are a lot of work. I have taken summer classes each summer and most of them have been online, but they are still a lot of work.

In college I have learned it does not really matter how many friends I have it’s the quality of friends you have.  In high school it seemed like it mattered how many friends you have.  I have found some friends that are true friends and they are my biggest cheerleaders.  My one friend is so sweet she is a history major, but she always asked me about my field work.  I always work in a daycare and she will ask me how the kids were.  My one friend’s mom was teacher and she always helps me what is grade level appropriate.  Another friend I have and I have awkward story time.  I know this sounds weird, but some pretty awkward stuff happens to us.

This school year I was a president of a club.  At first it was pretty stressful, but one of my good friends stepped up and helped me come up with some ideas.   I don’t think if she had helped me the club would have turned out as good as it did.  I made some good friends through this club and I found some people that I can really count on.  It’s a community service club and we do different projects to help people in the community.