Lately, I’ve felt a lot of frustration; mainly because I set myself up for it. The frustration has come from two ends: from my internship perspective and my educator perspective. In the beginning, I had this amazing idea (so I thought) about how to create this cross-curricular unit between grade levels in middle school that would tie back to cotton. Where I have now come to a halt is in making this internship fit within the confines of the curriculum. There are two very specific goals that I am trying to meet within serving this internship:

1.) To create a curriculum that naturally fits within the confines of the Common Core and NC Essential Standards.

2.) To meet Cotton Inc. wishes, which is to get the message across that cotton is a viable, natural, and sustainable crop that can lead to economic growth.

Cotton itself is a natural product that lends itself naturally over to specific curriculum. The problem is that with focusing so specifically on cotton itself, I am starting to create a niche that is not longer relevant to the educators in the classroom. I begin polarizing my audience because not everyone has the flexibility to spend time and discuss the specifics on just cotton.

On the success side, I believe that I have tapped into a way to make it begin to fit naturally again within being such a niche idea in the classroom. One of my colleagues and I were discussing this whole idea from his standpoint, and he mentioned how if I had cotton as one of many options to tie into his unit, then he could see how it would work. I’m still muddling through it in my head and trying to fixate on how this will work, but I think I am off to a good start with it.