Approaching the End...

It's become that time in the semester again when everything is due and everything seems to be happening all at once. It's overwhelming and can make you burn out very fast! I decided this week for my blog that I would write about my learning experiences from the end of semester chaos and how I am coping with it. It was good to do some outside research to see ways of dealing with it and it also gave me a mindset from a teach point of view on ways I can prevent from putting my students through so much.
Some ways I found of coping with the stress of the end of the semester:
1) Monitor your mindset: times like this, it's so easy to keep telling myself that I won't get through, but I should really be telling myself that everything WILL be alright and that I WILL get through it.
2) Maintain reality: It's important to stay focused on what is in front of me and focus on one thing at a time. I'm not superwoman so I can't do 20 things at once and I shouldn't try to.
3) Avoid isolation: When you have a ton going on like this, it's easy for our brains to go in thousands of different directions when we sit down alone in a quiet place. It's important to talk things out with others and let them know how you are feeling.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/design-your-path/201304/6-tips-not-freaking-out-about-end-semester-stress

I have thought about becoming a teacher and how my students will be in the same place I am in now and I thought of ways I could help them cope with the stress in my future classroom. I plan on not scheduling everything to be due at the same time as other classes probably assign things. Even having things assigned two weeks before everyone else assigns things could eliminate a ton of stress off of a student. I also want my students to know that I am there if they need help with anything and I also don't want assignments that I give them to overwhelm them so much that they don't even learn anything. I plan on making major assignments fun for them in a new way that they can learn from instead of the normal, boring ten page research paper. Having something fun to do can eliminate some stress and give them something to keep their mind off of everything else for a little bit.

This relates to the NCTCS because standard 4 states that teachers understand student learning. It's important for us as teachers to understand how students develop and their cognitive thought processes, so during this time in our students' lives when everything is going on it's important to take that into consideration and think about what we are assigning during this time and how it may affect our students.

I know I didn't really pull any significant learning moment from class this week, but I felt that this was the thing that really laid heavy on my mind and I did learn a lot especially with transforming into the teacher mindset of things.