There’s been nothing typical about the start of my school year, that’s for sure! The phone call from the Lansing State Journal on my conference hour is just another event that fits with this interesting beginning. Still reeling, overwhelmed and humbled by the attention and generosity, I spoke with the reporter and shared my thoughts on the TODAY show experience. I wanted to be sure we had the proper media release paperwork for students before having her send a photographer, but when my principal informed me that a NEWS10 reporter would be arriving around noon today, we figured we might as well have a photographer come along too. Little did we know the NEWS10 reporter would be a Portland native who I’d missed having as a student by only a year!
So, there I was teaching the first full lesson of the year to a group of students I had met for 25 minutes and asking them to do their very best to ignore the cameras moving around our room! They were on their best behavior and did a great job of trying to focus on the lesson I’d prepared. That night, they tuned in to see the segment on the local news.
The following morning, I read the article online and was grateful for the opportunity to share more of my story. But when I saw the actual paper, I was shocked!
All in all, this attention has been beneficial in that many people outside of education have been able to see just how much teachers spend to support the work they are doing in their classrooms!