"Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education."

As I sit here in the airport, yet again, I look back at the week I just had here in Atlanta, Georgia. It has been a remarkable experience and I am thankful that the National Endowment for the Humanities took a chance on me, a first year teacher. This was an experience that I didn't even know I had the opportunity to apply for until 4 days before the due date. I figured out really quick the requirements for the trip, wrote an essay in less than a day and sent everything off in the mail. A month later I found out that I was accepted into the program and I didn't know at the time what that truly meant.

Tim Crimmons, Glenn Eskew, Akinyele Umoja, and Martha Battle made this week well worth it. Their knowledge on the topics they discussed with us was well done and always had meaning and went with our tours, or summed them up perfectly. All of the teachers that I had the pleasure of meeting and working with made the workshop more fun. What a great group of people. It is a blessing when you get the opportunity to talk with other educators and work with them to come up with lesson plans or just discuss the content. The amount of information you can learn from them is everything a first year teacher needs and more.

I am leaving a bit overwhelmed, especially in the department on how I will do this information justice in my classroom. But, I am ready to get back and start working on the drawing board and figuring out how I can bring this into my 7th and 8th grade classes. Knowing that my students last year didn't know much about the Civil Rights movement until we discussed it, I've decided it needs to be talked about more. With everything that is going on in modern society right now, I feel students need to learn and understand the past in order to understand the significance of it now in the future.

Well, it's time to get on Pinterest and start looking up ideas for school. With it starting in less than two weeks, I am freaking out a little bit. I wonder if the first day of school will ever get easier?

Ready to be home for more than a couple of days and looking forward to my bed.
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