Where Positivity meets Practicum

As a Freshman in college I started out my year eager to begin classes to help me reach my goal of becoming an Elementary Teacher. Quickly I realized that the younger children were the ones that I wanted to work with and also transferring schools would lead me to be behind if I stuck with Elementary Ed. At Appalachian I found Child Development and begin to fall in love with the courses that I was taken. As a Sophomore I can remember studying all about the developmental stages and becoming so fascinated with it all. I was so excited for this career path, but that excitement quickly dwindled away as I started my Junior year.
As a Junior the course work that I was enrolled in was designed more toward Early Childhood Teachers and I did not want to be teaching, I wanted to work with families. This was my goal and this is what I was sticking too. I was getting so excited for the Summer because I had a 200 hour practicum where I thought that I was getting to work with a Parent Educator, but was told last minute that it was not acceptable. So I allowed them to place me in the practicum cite of their choice...because there was no other acceptable cite for them.

After a week of frustrations, unreturned phone calls, and things going back and forth, I was just tired and fed up with the whole situation. This made me loose my joy for the five weeks that were about to take place. Though I do not want to be in a classroom I realize that sometimes we have to do the work that we dont want to do in order to get to where we want to be. Through tear filled eyes and hour long phone calls with my mom the night before day one, I decided that I needed to choose positivity in order to gain some sort of experience through this process. 

It was up to me to gain these experiences that I needed, not anyone else, and no matter how much I talked about it nothing was going to change my location or the amount of hours. I just had to suck it up and do it. This morning when I woke up, I stood in front of my mirror as I was putting on my make up (as I do many days) and told myself "you can do this," you have been around children so many times in your life, this is just one new experience. As I walked out the door of my apartment I grabbed my positivity. 

Now that day one is completed, and I came home wiped out smelling like baby wipes, covered in sand from my head to my toes, and experiencing the biggest amount of snuggles a girl can get I dont want to leave my positivity at day one. I want my positivity to continue through all five weeks. I want to improve in my interactions with the children, I want to gain so many different techniques, I want this to be valuable. I dont want to leave the same way I came. 

Each day I will continue to learn, grow, and experience new ways of doing things. Each day I will take a little something and make it better. I will be better with each new day than the day before. And when I complain I'll remember to bring my positivity with me instead of my negativity. 

Mindy