I'm still cruising through my first year of teaching. I've crashed my cruiser multiple times but it hasn't been totaled yet. I have a permanent bruise on my leg because I keep getting kicked by a little girl in my class. I have learned a lot about anger and anger management. Not for the kids. For myself. These kids just know how to push buttons. At work I am busy all the time. If I am not teaching then I am planning or handling a crisis. We have a lot of those. Friday the Superintendent of the district came into my room. I don't know what miracle was at work, but for the ten minutes that he was in my room my students were actually on task, in their seats, and quiet. That literally never happens. It was awesome. I looked like I actually maintain good control of the classroom.
I had to laugh the other day. I went into Ben's 1st grade class at the end of the day. They were all cleaning up and getting ready to go home. Ben's teacher said "It really isn't as chaotic as it looks." just as I was thinking in my head "Here is a class of 27 students getting ready to go home and they are 10 times quieter than my class of 7 students. I must be doing something wrong."
On the positive side, I have gained some really good experience and I have gotten a huge confidence boost. Don't get me wrong, I miss being at home, but I have to admit that it feels good to be earning money and getting some good feed back from other people about how I am doing. That will be hard to give up. And, I was able to renew my teaching license recently which will guarantee me another 3 years of security.
And, I have gotten the opportunity to love. Yea, some of my students really bug me sometimes, but I love all of them. How could I not. They are just children. Children dealing with things that no child should ever have to. I hope that they find a lot of people who will give them a break in life. They deserve it.
During the reception I sneaked in with chicken nuggets for the kids. We tried to hide so the other grandchildren wouldn't be jealous, but you can't hide chicken nuggets from a bunch of hungry children. They followed their noses right to us. So, we had an impromptu picnic. Lots of fun. We finally made it home Friday night and had a good night of sleep. At nine o'clock Saturday morning Sean, Nate's brother, called. They were trying to get home to Washington, but the Idaho border was closed because of the weather. They were stranded. They spent Saturday enduring our almost clean house and the almost gourmet meals we fed them. We had a great time. We were sad they couldn't get home, but happy that we had the chance to spend the day with them.
