I was beginning to feel overwhelmed yet again.

He was running around the room at warp

speed and I couldn’t reel him in. His energy was contagious, at first he was alone but he
assembled a small army endowed with the same enthusiasm for subverting authority. He didn’t
mean to, he was only doing what six-year-olds do. Yet he was creating chaos, distracting the
masses, annoying his elders, we had a minor revolution on our hands!

“Let’s shake it out!”

I tried something new. “Shake your right hand!” and he looked at me like I had lost my
marbles. But he shook his right hand. “Shake your left hand!” He shook his left hand and started
to laugh as I shook my hands with him. “Shake your legs!” and we shook our legs. “Shake your
way back to your seat” and to my astonishment, it worked! I had calmed the chaos. He sat down
and began to code. My coworkers looked at me with astonishment, it had actually worked. Caleb
was in his seat for the first time in an hour.

I began working at Code Ninjas only a month before, a teaching position for a high
schooler. A unique first job, something I was interested in. I am getting paid to have fun. Most of
the time. It is an amazing experience, I love my job, but there are many like Caleb, whom the
Code Senseis’ can not quell. Until we tried something new.

In my junior year, I took a class called Virginia Teachers for Tomorrow, and I loved it!
The class consisted of two parts, a dual enrollment course and a ten-week internship at a local
school. I loved the class, I learned about Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development,
Kohlberg's theory of Moral Development, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, and I began
to see each present in my peers. I used what I learned as a tutor. I build my understanding of
myself and my peers.

The class led me to my internship at Princess Anne Middle with Mrs. Piper’s Sixth Grade
Advanced Science Class. My goal is to eventually be an Earth Science Teacher, I want to work
with older kids, so Code Ninjas was unexplored territory for me. Ages range from six to
fourteen, the older kids tend to be happy on their own, diligently working away, working towards
the next step, but the younger kids need constant attention or it descends into madness very
quickly. I slowly started to integrate my experiences from VTFT into my job, offering the kids a
time to get their energy out and get to work. Explaining concepts that kids in the concrete
operational stage can understand. I see the moral dilemmas in students every day, I see the
conflicts of psychosocial development, I see the applications of my class. I work to generate
positive development and solve problems through the application of my knowledge. I figured out
how to calm the chaos as a teacher.