On Bubbles and Modeling

--And there was dancing and rejoicing for the family the day Natalie blew bubbles and quit putting the bubble wand in her mouth!  The trumpets have sounded!

After weeks and weeks of convincing Nattie to stop putting the bubble wand in her mouth to blow the bubbles, she finally blew an extensive stream of tiny bubbles from the wand when we were out in the driveway last week!  Yay!  and can I hear an "Amen"! 

Basically, since we were able to head outside in the early spring, the whole family's been excitedly modeling for Nattie how to hold the wand a few centimeters away from her lips and blow through the little wand to make the bubbles.  We continued to model and she kept trying it!  We never gave up and neither did she and now-what we thought would seemingly never occur has finally come to fruition!  The whole family clapped and cheered when we saw the stream of bubbles leaving her wand last week!

All of the convincing, the modeling, the self-talk, the positive reinforcement that it took to get her to do something so small made me think of the modeling I do as a teacher when working with students.  Since school's been out, I've had some time to really reflect on my year-and I'm asking myself-did I model enough for my students?  And I am answering honestly-I think not.  So in the future, I am going to pay more attention to making sure that I model enough and yet avoid swooping and rescuing so that all of them keep trying and reaching for the stars.