Late nights with early mornings are mostly miserable, but also exciting adventures. Keeping the kids positive is always a difficult thing, especially with teenagers. Mrs Bozarth and I took the kids out the Pendleton for the junior livestock show there. They were nervous and I guess I was too, because even though I was completely unfamiliar with the material, I was responsible for instructing them in the topic, so I had researched it as much as possible, and attempted in every way to approach the subject in an interesting and engaging way. I think part of their nerves was also in part because they were now put up to a challenge of working things out on their own instead of being able to rely on their classmates to help them with details they might not remember on their own from lack of experience or time on the topic. But the interesting thing was that when they were done, they felt fairly confident in their work, which is definitely an exciting thing to hear.

It's weird knowing that I won't be working with these students again for a long time. Kinda sad to think about, really. The longer I've been here at HRVHS, the more I've gotten to know the students, and especially this last week I've gotten to know more of the students names, which has really helped in multiple ways. They know I know who they are. They aren't just a body in the class anymore. They matter. They know that I know they exist. They are no longer afraid to approach me, but are also much more respectful and pay attention because they want to be thought well of. Managing a class where I know the students names is so much easier, and I've really put in the extra effort to burn their respective names into my memory so that I won't have to use so many generalizations in the future when trying to get their attention.