Sorry I've neglected you once again for a 2 month stint little blog. As I've told myself before, it's so important to reflect as you go, and lately I've just been going and perhaps in the absence of reflecting more frequently, found myself a little bit out of sorts.
Already in my 14th week of teaching drama! Began a new semester this past week with kindergarten, 1st grade, 4th grade, 6th grade and 8th grade. Some things that have gone well, in the midst of constantly changing my speaking register and the arrangement of my room to accomodate 5 year olds to 15 year olds -
-the little ones made character hats before they acted out the 3 Little Pigs. Super cute, super easy lesson and really helped them develop character a little quicker than just character walks and voices. (works well for Kinder and 1st, maybe even 2nd)
-did an impromptu speech project with the older students - they had 30 seconds to present a cold speech from a topic they chose on the spot, then we reflected on good and bad speaking habits. Even though this lesson was rocky at times, I think for me it really did set up a clear baseline of where the kids' confidence is at and it also gave me an opportunity to stress how important it is to be able to have conviction and confidence when you are speaking.
Otherwise, I've been a bit discouraged lately. Maybe it's the point in the year when you're supposed to see some kind of amazing shift in the creativity the students are putting out there, and I'm just not seeing it. Maybe it's the point in the year where I am supposed to be getting feedback about how great I am doing - but I feel like I have received the opposite. Looking for inspiration in Denver is hard, the mountains are a wonderful sanctuary on the weekends to forget about the stress I put on myself related to work. But artistic and creative inspiration is sparse.
For these fallish/winterish months I've decided to focus on family and faith, and see what happens when I trust my roots and the people who root me, more than just my own individual endeavors and ideas. I want to be surprised by what I can actually discover when I put my faith in my family and my family and their faith, first?!
the definition of faith is --- complete trust or confidence in someone or something
To me, this means letting go of instincts that go otherwise than what your heart tells you. Having faith that the future is going to turn out okay, based on the fact that all decisions you've made up to now have created a great life, full of adventures, friends, challenges and triumphs. Letting go of worries and difficulties, and having faith that the people who love you and you loving yourself is what is going to make everything fall into its right place.
the definition of family is - a person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy
Coming from a very small actual biological family, my idea of family includes but extends past just my parents, grandparents, etc. While they are the people who root me, who we have an unconditional and mutual love for each other, when I think about who else I treat with special loyalty or intimacy it definitely includes many friends I've made along the way. These days it includes a boyfriend, who has a large biological family nearby, whom he has so graciously included me in many times now, and provides me with a huge sense of special intimacy. This leaves me feeling super grateful but also with a sense of emptiness and wonder how he'd fit with my family, with my home base, how he can intertwine himself with my roots.
So I am going to ask a lot of questions, give lots of love and attention to family and the faith that they provide me with. Seems appropriate at the holiday times anyways, but has been something that has been on my brain a lot recently. I'll be going back home twice this holiday season, and I am confident that those trips will give me lots of motivation and recharged energy to use in the areas I feel deflated these days.
So cheers to turkey or tofurkey, cheers to snow, cheers to love that comes in many wonderful forms.
C