What would you tell your younger self?

A question posed on the radio: What would you tell your younger self .....?  While thinking about this question many questions came to mind about my life and what would I tell my younger self about them.  It was intriguing to explore those questions many of which can relate to the many topics we have covered in our first quarter of becoming professional teachers.

Then I thought what a fun assignment this could be in the classroom.  While often a teacher will pose the question of what would you tell the next class as they enter their next grade.  But how much more interesting would it be to think about "what would you tell your younger self (at the start of the school year) now that you are finishing the school year? 

Posing the question this way your students can really think about what they have learned as students, as people, as friends etc. throughout the year.  Who were they?  Who are they now?  Where would they like to go next year?  Was fifth grade as scary as you thought it would be? Was your teacher what you expected? Did you make new friends? Did you lose old friends? Did the unexpected happen? The questions are endless.

The fun thing is that this can be done at any grade level and how cool would it be to read them later in life and see how you have changed and grown.

What would I tell my 9 week younger self about the first quarter of the Teacher Certification program?  Now there is an interesting question........