A Week's Worth of News

Despite my absence here, I am still well and good and suddenly busy. Where did the summer go? For that matter, where has the year gone?? It seems impossible that it be September already. Kevin and I actually bought a Christmas gift a few days ago. While we're definitely not close to the holidays, the fact that we saw this item and even thought, "Ooh! That would make a good Christmas gift" is testimony to how much of the year has already gone.

This past week was spent entirely at Inservice and in putting together a classroom for the fourth graders arriving tomorrow. I feel pretty good about the way I have things organized this year, and the way I intend to run my classroom. The difference between my state of mind last year (getting ready to go into my first year), and this year (getting ready to go into my second year) is like night and day. Last year, I felt sure that I was ready to take on any challenge(haha...fool!). I fit the stereotypic description of any brand new college graduate, and most especially any brand new teacher. I had visions of perfection, of changing lives, of seeing my children grow academically by leaps and bounds, of being completely organized at all times, of having great relationships with all my parents. I learned some major lessons last year: Instead of expecting to changes ALL lives, my new hope is to have a greater impact on just a few. I've come to realize that I can't always achieve perfection and still have time to get some sleep. Not all of my children are going to magically understand every concept I teach....and some may never get it. No teacher is organized at all times. In fact, many are happy when they can pull out an activity on the same day a colleague asks for it. And finally, every once in awhile, there's always a parent who is never going to happy, no matter how many times you bend over backwards to help his/her child. This year, I want to be a better teacher than I was last year. But I no longer expect perfection of myself. A byproduct of that philosophy is that I'm much more relaxed going into this year. If everything is not exactly as I want it at this moment....there's always time to change and adapt. Tomorrow is the first day of the school year, not the last.

We had friends here for the holiday weekend, another recently married couple who live in DC. We took them to the beach on Saturday and then we all went to dinner at Guadalajara's in for dinner. On Sunday, we took off for Kitty Hawk a few hours away and visited the Wright Brother's Memorial. We took a walk along the beach at Outer Banks and then played miniature golf...which I WON, thank you very much!

Now Kevin is at work and our friends have gone back home, and it's just me here. It's a beautiful day, 75 degrees and blue skies. I have the french doors to the deck open to let the breeze in as I do some schoolwork.

Send all prayers and positive vibes my way tomorrow and wish me luck!

~mtb