Worlds Apart

Last week I was getting my classroom ready and going to teacher-prep meetings. I left Friday feeling more prepared, organized and more excited about teaching than I ever have. What a great feeling!

So, as the students arrived on Monday, I was eager to see their faces in contrast to feeling butterflies and bits of dread.

My homeroom is wonderful, there are only 12 students and they are all in the advanced art class, many of whom were my students last year. This is a great way to start my day, also in contrast to last years homeroom.

I teach 3 periods of seventh grade art, it is crazy to only have one prep. I always feel like I am forgetting to do something. And my students really are still like sixth graders. So I was able to be silly, have the students do motions and repeat after me and they actually did it and with huge smiles on their faces. I love it, and I think that they actually like me; which is a huge bonus!

So I am finished by 10:45, most days. The day flies by! I have so much time to get things done, relax and plan for the next day. Who would have thought, I don’t have to wing it and fly by the seat of my pants for every class. Well, I suppose I could if I wanted to. I have gotten really good at that, considering in the two years that I have been a teacher, I have had 15 preps and the only way to survive was to wing most every class I taught.

I was thinking as I left school on Monday (before lunch) that because I am not being stretched in so many directions I will be able to actually care for, encourage and love my students. The whole reason I went into teaching in the first place was for the students. Not just to survive in an intense, completely taxing, overly demanding, underpaying carrier.

I am so excited to get to know more than my students’ names and pay attention to more than just the attention getters and troublemakers. This is my new goal for this year. I am already meeting my previous goal of smiling and laughing a lot more!