My first week as a student teacher was interesting. I got to learn so much in just five days of  teaching in a classroom than I had learned as a student in the Bachelor of Education program. It was a difficult week, trying to break into teaching 30 students and not have them look at me with bored faces. It was tough. But invaluable. We talk about how students are so diverse in terms of their ethnicity, racial backgrounds, experiences etc. But students are diverse learners as well. The challenge is to provide these students with and education that is meaningful for them! I think this was my greatest struggle this week. How do I make students interested in a subject like government? Some students were perfectly fine learning about government. Some were really bored. And I don’t blame them for feeling that way! But, I WANT my students to find something interesting about government. Even if it is something small. My class is so wonderful. They are so good to me and cooperative and I highly appreciate them for it. I just want to be able to do something meaningful for them. I started the week off by creating a class contract and it went great! Students were involved and motivated to be a part of something that will affect them. I got to know my students and my students got to know a little bit about me! It was great. When I started teaching government, however, I realized that I was trying to pack too much in. I was going so fast, students were finding it hard to keep up. Even though I was trying to relate the unit to them, I feel as though my point was not coming across to them. I was overworking myself every night to try and make the next lesson better and more interesting. However, I feel that because I was trying to pack in so much at once, I was losing my students. I was stressing so much about being the perfect teacher, that I was doing everything that was working against that aspiration. One thing I learned in this week though is that there is no such thing as a perfect teacher. However, there is a such thing as a teacher that strives for excellence. Mistakes will be made but that’s where lessons are learned. I want to aspire to this. I want to take calculated risks, go through trial and error, make mistakes, and LEARN and do better. I just want the best for my students. My goal is to guide my students and focus on the BIGGER ideas instead of the little details. My goal is to find ways to engage my class and feel motivated to do well. I feel as though I have developed a good relationship with my students. My students know that I care about them. The goal is get the students interested and relating the content and the bigger ideas to themselves. If the students are enjoying the content, they will be able to learn it.