Once upon a time there was a young, newfound teacher named Brooke.  At 24, she had decided she could see herself in no other profession other than teaching, and decided to go back to school to pursue her dream.

    She resolved to go to National-Louis University, taking night classes while working full time as a special education teacher's aide.  Her first semester was tough, but she's loved most every minute of it.  Learning how to teach brought Brooke a lot of happiness, even though it was so much work!  In her classes she learned many wonderful methods and strategies for teaching (such as constructivism), some history of education, key players in the educational world, how to include students with special needs, and most importantly how to be an effective teacher.

    Brooke didn't need to learn how to be a passionate teacher.  She knew in the future that this would come naturally, and that she already had that quality in her current job.  She pictured herself five years from now, and thought "I see myself as a well-liked teacher who is growing still as much as her students.  Yes, I will have learned very much from the time I first stepped in my classroom on the first day of school and then, but I will still forever be learning.  However, there are many things in that time frame to be nurtured!"

     She smiled thinking of how she would develop over those years.  "My skills as an English teacher will have grown tremendously with experience.  The flow of my lessons will be smoother due to reflections I made on them from the first time I taught them.  I will have a greater abundance of methods and ideas to make learning English as fun as possible for the students.  I will have found new and interesting novels, short stories, poetry and the like to relay to my students.  My classroom management skills will have become more keen and effective.  The rapport between myself and my students will have grown.  Friendships will arise from co-workers!  We'll have a blast!"

    But then she frowned, her brow furrowing.  Those goals were much easier said than done!  She sighed, remembering that she still had an entire semester of school to go before she would student teach.  Her next most important class would be Teaching English in the Secondary Schools.  Ahhh!  That will help her to learn all the wonderful methods of teaching and standards of Language Arts.  "My Focus on Adolescents class will help me in understanding high school aged students, which will help with building a wonderful rapport with them!"  She thought gleefully, cheering up.

    This however, would just be the beginning for Brooke.  How excited she felt! Come March, she would be student teaching!  She'd have a class all to herself, where she could develop her own lesson plans and work on being as effective as possible all with the help of her cooperating teachers.  She couldn't wait.

    And what about creating deeper relationships with co-workers?  The kind of   relationship that will help her to collaborate effectively when it counts most for the student?  The kind of relationship where they are not just limited to seeing each other in the workplace?  The kind of relationship where life-long friends bloom?  "That's an easy one," she thought.  "I'll just be myself!"

    Now she had tons of ideas flowing through her mind.  Now she could start to write that final reflection for her very first professional portfolio.

    She started out in a very cute, traditional way.
 
 

    Once upon a time...