Preparing to Take One Step at a Time

I would also like to share with you about my journey of teaching so far. Ever since I was young, teaching has always been something I wanted to do “when I grew up.” In elementary school, I have memories of certain teachers who made school fun, and I wanted to be the teacher who could do that for students. In sixth grade, I was told that what I wanted to be now (which was a teacher) was not what I was actually going to be. My stubborn self showed them! Then entering ninth grade, I told my guidance counselor that I was going to Calvin and that I was going to be a teacher. Granted, throughout this time other occupations came into thought, but teaching always stuck around. I had this mentality until my senior year of college. For a solid eight years, I knew exactly what I was going to do. Then during student teaching of my senior year fall semester, my thoughts about teaching drastically changed. I did not want to be a teacher anymore. This was the hardest idea for me to consider. What was my life going to look like? I just spent three and a half years pursuing this and now this work and time spent seemed useless. Throughout my entire student teaching semester, I wrote journals titled “Do I Really Want to Teach?” I never thought I would ask myself this question, but I did. I went from being dead set on only teaching at a Christian high school to being open to working at a public school, a home school co-op, or a tutoring center. I received advice from my sister-in-law and a friend to pursue classroom teaching because having your own classroom is worlds different than student teaching in someone else’s classroom. Although student teaching was not the best experience, God used this discouraging time to place me exactly where I am today. I thought I would be at a private Christian school, but, instead, I am teaching at an inner-city public school.

I know that the first year will be hard. I know that the second year will be hard. I’ve been told that teaching will get easier. So all I have to do is take one step at a time. I know that during my first year I will need a lot of prayer and encouragement. So please pray with me and for me as I prepare to take one step at a time. Right now I am looking for a place to live and hopefully a roommate as well. I am also setting up my classroom and doing a little bit of lesson planning.

The Back Story

Many of my friends and family have asked me to write a blog with the intent of updating the entire world of my adventures as a first year teacher (Okay, let's be real. There is a very slim chance my blog will go viral, but you mean the world to me for reading this!). I decided to take their advice so that I will not have to repeat stories five times over. So thank you in advance for your support and love. I'm excited (and extremely nervous) to start this new life experience.

First things first: what is the back story to my blog’s title? I may or may not get a little geeked about infinity. During my junior year of college, I wrote a sixteen page paper titled "To Infinity and Beyond: Understanding God's Love through a Mathematicians Eyes." This is by far my favorite paper that I have written. The premise of the paper was that large numbers can become incomprehensible, and everyday language obscures the definition, leading us to define infinity as simply “exceedingly large.” However, infinity is much more than simply an innumerable amount of finite numbers. To understand the depth of infinity, I looked at sets (or a group) of numbers. If you had two piles of rocks, you could compare their sizes: one pile might have five rocks while the other pile has twelve. These rock piles are finite sets, but you can compare infinite sets as well. For my non-math major friends, I will refrain from explaining further. But believe me when I say that there are different sizes of infinity! And not only is one infinite set larger than others, but there are an infinite amount of these larger sets. Your pile of rocks could be infinite in size, but I could make another infinite pile of rocks which is bigger! THIS IS MIND-BLOWING! And thus I have a love for infinity. After attempting to comprehend the depth of infinity, I showed many places in the Bible which depict God's love as infinite and incomprehensible. The concept of infinity is extremely hard for us to understand, but this concept brings us closest to describing the amount of love God has for us.

As you can see from my tangent, infinity has a special place in my heart, and I wanted my blog's title to reflect this place. I also have no idea where this next year will lead me; it feels as if I have an infinite amount of possibilities for where this school year will take me. But wherever I find myself, I know that God will be with me sharing His infinite love with me—which brings me to the 5910 in the URL address. Psalm 59:10 says, "My God's love is changeless for me" (The Living Bible Translation). This means that the mind-blowing love that God has for us will stay consistent. For these reasons, I chose InfinitePossibilities5910 to represent this blog.