Alison+Hamling


 * __Genre Reflection 3__**
 * __Lucky__**
 * Dear Journal,**
 * I feel so incredibly lucky today. After my 2nd week of teaching the class all by myself, my students came in and asked me what we were going to learn today. When I told them to ask Mrs. P, they all looked shocked. They had gotten used to my teaching style, to my lessons, and to my way of grabbing their attention. It felt fantastic. And also sad.**
 * I am so lucky to be in such an incredible school, with amazing students, and also fantastic and supportive colleagues. I feel so lucky that I have a job that is all my mine. I KNOW how difficult it will be for my friends in TOSS to find a job in this terrible time for the dreaded job search. My friends will stress and cry and stress and get angry and stress because this is a tough time to try to be a teacher.**
 * I am so lucky to have found my place in the world. For years, I worried about my future and about why I was unhappy doing real estate. Now, I know. I was meant to teach. It is my place in the world. There is no place where I am happier than in the classroom, with my students, when one understands a concept they did not understand before. It is the most rewarding job on earth. I am blessed. I am lucky. I am happy.**
 * So, I will thank God every day for the opportunities I am given. I am truly, truly, truly lucky to have found my place in the world.**
 * Alison**
 * __Genre Reflection 2: This past week I experienced parent/teacher conferences for the first time and although most of them were fantastic....others were excruciating! Needless to say, I was inspired so this letter is a hodgepodge of thoughts to a number of different parents.__**

Dear Helicopter Parent, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you. Thank you for giving me my first true feelings of disgust as a teacher. You have created a son that is rude, irresponsible, frustrating, funny but crude, and brilliant but lacking the drive he needs to succeed.

YOU have given your child every opportunity you could afford to "better" them but all you have done is created a spoiled brat. By providing your child a new I-phone each of the FOUR times he broke it, you have taught your son that no matter what, mommy and daddy will always give him anything he wants.

Unfortunately, he has carried this sense of entitlement into MY classroom, therefore, it is now MY problem. Your little monster talks back to adults, bullies his fellow peers, and refuses to do the assignments because mommy and daddy have said that if he doesn't want to do it, it is because he is not being challenged. How about he is just lazy? Because that is what I see and what his other teachers see. But you will NEVER see this.

Because although you think you are protecting him from getting into too much trouble, he also has learned that mommy and daddy erase any consequences to his actions. You have gotten him out of bad grades, school suspension, and even sports games because you were afraid he was going to get hurt by better players.

Don't you understand what you have done? You have set your child up fail in everything he does. He is probably going to live with you for the rest of your life because he will go from job to job (quitting or being fired) because he doesn't like his boss OR the work tasks and doesn't "feel" like doing it.

So thank you for teaching me what not to do with my future children becauses I don't want to see my child become the person that your son is. I especially don't want to see my child being passed forward on year after year because he is too much to handle. Thank you for your student because he is making me a better teacher.

After all, I only have him for 180 days...you get him for the rest of your life. Enjoy. Ms. Hamling

PS. To answer your last email...Yes, anytime there is an incident involving your son OR when he doesn't turn in an assignment OR when he refuses to do work, I will take time out of that class period and away from the other 25 students to EMAIL/CALL/SEND SMOKE SIGNALS to you. It's not like I have to do anything important during the school day, like teach.


 * __Genre Reflection One__**
 * __For Jermele__**

I see you in the halls with a crowd of your peers surrounding you like leeches hanging on your every word making you feel like a king.

I see you making faces behind my back cracking up thinking its funny to mock my voice and gestures.

I see you looking semi-slyly at another kid's paper searching for the answer you don't know.

I see you struggling to write just one paragraph trying to get above failing.

I see you listen when I give you help and direction trying to help you succeed.

I see you look at the marks on your paper and with pride you smile at me.