School's Out!

Well, I did it. I survived my year as a grade 5 teacher. It definitely had its shares of highs and lows but feels good to have made it through. This was by far, my most challenging year of teaching yet. It's hard coming into a room of kids about to hit puberty, in the middle of the year. I was a lot different than their first teacher which was a hard transition for all of us. It was hard to all of a sudden go from doing nothing to being constantly busy for 6 months straight. I like working, but my job is not my life and I wasn't a fan of spending after-hours time on it. But I worked with a great team and Joel was a huge encourager as always.



By the end of the year, I felt like I was finally connecting with some of my students. A group of girls would often come to me for help with relational issues and we'd have long chats about friendship and changing and growing up. All of my kids are going to middle school next year and some are moving away. This resulted in a huge sob-fest by all the girls 10 minutes before the bell ran on the last day of school. The girls were crying and the boys were very confused. One boy said he'd never seen so many people cry at once and I just smiled and told him sometimes girls do that. They often drove me nuts, but that night I worried about them and hoped they'd be okay as they went their separate ways. As hard as teaching is, it's rewarding. If I had my way I'd just skip most of the curriculum (they have to learn way too much anyways) and focus on the relational stuff.


Now that summer is here, I'm trying to find things to keep me busy. Getting a job meant my role in organizing our new home was put on hold. Joel has waited patiently and I'm ready to get it done, although I'm horrible at it. Fortunately I'm married to an organizational genius who is willing to guide me. It'll be nice for everything to finally have a place. I have other goals this summer but will save that for another post. For now, I'm enjoying some time to relax and planning out my list of things to accomplish.