Never say never..or something like that

We've all heard the saying, "Never say never." It has been around for ages, long before that sweet little Bieber boy, and for a good reason. You just never know what might happen! For some odd reason though, I still catch myself saying, "Oh, I'll never do that in my classroom." I started off this semester with an attitude kind of like that. I guess I just had an idea of what the ideal teacher/classroom should look like after taking a ton of education courses where the ideas are great but are mostly just that...ideas that don't always fall into place once in the actual classroom.  Most of these practices in teaching that we are learning about will take time, patience and EXPERIENCE. When I walked into a kindergarten classroom at the beginning of the year, I expected a heavy dose of positive discipline delivered in a structured, organized, consistent way. I immediately began to think, "Oh, I would never do this in my classroom." I also became extremely overwhelmed that I was not seeing many of the practices and teaching methods that we had learned about in all those education classes. I became almost blind to the many wonderful things that were happening around me.

Once I was able to open my mind and began to look for the things I could learn from my experience, I became not only comfortable in my classroom but confident as well. I realized that because the classroom environment is flexible with its structure and isn't crammed full of rules and routines that are set in stone,  I have plenty of wiggle room to experiment with my own ideas without stepping on my mentor teacher's toes! She has been wonderful in allowing me to try out different methods of rewards systems, classroom seating, and lessons. Every day I am in her classroom, I leave with more knowledge that I came in with. If I had continued the semester with the attitude that this classroom just would not work for me, I would have missed out on such a blessing. Although there will always be things that might not settle right with how I want to run my class one day, there is still so much for me to learn.