Focusing on the Good Times

This particular school year was a tough one for me, the toughest in six years of teaching.  I don't want to say that I had a tough class because I had a bunch of REALLY amazing kids, but I will say that I had a few challenging kids and several conflicting personalities.  I got to the point where there were days like this one when I was leaving school right after the kids and going home to look at other jobs.  Not other teaching jobs, but something entirely out of the teaching profession itself.  I even talked to Doug to see if there were jobs at his work that I might be able to get.  I truly thought that I was done with teaching.

Even when I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, it was just a matter of who and what I was going to teach.  My first year of teaching was crazy and overwhelming, but it was MAGICAL.  I got to go to school every day and play with kids!  We did cool experiments, read exciting books, and best of all I got to see the "ah-hah" moment on my students' faces when they finally understood something.

I've come in contact with some, we'll use the term old experienced, teachers in my years.  After working closely with a few, I came to wonder, what happened to them?  Why had they turned so bitter?

This year I started to wonder if that was going to be me.  Was teaching losing its magic for me?  If it was, I wanted to get out of the profession right away.  I always feel bad for the kids that get the teacher that is negative.  I wasn't going to be THAT teacher.

Every year, I take TONS of pictures of my class.  I put them together on a DVD in a slideshow format and add music.  The process always keeps me up the entire night before the last day of school and although I'm incredibly sleep deprived, I'm not sure I'd have it any other way.

The whole process of selecting the pictures, choosing the music, and putting together the slideshow is actually a very reflective process for me.  Now, pictures are a great way to look back at the good times. I mean come on, do you really even take pictures of the bad times?  But, the conclusion that I come to every year, and especially this year, is that we had A LOT of good times and that's what I should focus on.

I handed over my camera a couple of times this year and actually got in a few of the pictures, so I'll share some of my favorites.

Constitution Convention, not a good day for me, but I kept a smile on. I hope it was at least a good day for them.

This is what goes on when I'm not looking.

I LOVE the hand raise here.  Middle and high schoolers don't raise their hand like this!

Learning about series and parallel circuits in class.

End of the Year class party... shouldn't have given THIS teacher the garden hose!

They ended up soaking me, which was fine. BUT I was pretty soaked after school when I accepted my pin for five years in LCPS.

So looking through these pictures and others makes me realize that I'm not ready to retire from the teaching profession just yet.  The "experienced" teachers I mentioned had just FORGOTTEN the magic that we get to experience on a daily basis.

I'm enjoying my summer, but BRING ON NEXT YEAR!  I CAN'T WAIT! :)