Hangin' on!

Busy busy busy - the start of a new year is always crazy but this one seems especially so. At the beginning of last year I had fairly low expectations for myself as a teacher, although at the time those expectations seemed very high. I would summarize them as: show up daily, have something planned for each class, put up a couple posters, and survive. Now that I've taught a year I feel like I should have all my bananas in a row, but I don't. My bananas are everywhere! I'm setting up my room and getting ready for kids and all I can think is, "I need one more week! Or one more month!" Really, you don't get into the flow of the year on the first day of school - it takes time. My expectations are unreasonably high (story of my life) but I can't be talked out of them (also the story of my life).

I took a personality quiz at a Quantum Learning session on Tuesday that matched my personality with a color. The colors are...

Gold - perfectionist, aligns with tradition
Blue - feeling, caring, emotional
Green - analytical, thinking, process-oriented
Orange - energetic, kinesthetic, tactile

Guess which one I scored highest in? Blue! Then a tie between green and gold. I guess this just solidifies it - teaching has changed me. It's brought out a caring, nurturing side that I don't know that I had before. Maybe it's good that I landed in middle school. They need my blue nurture.

School

I love to teach. I really do. I feel alive when I'm doing it and I love the back-of-my-mind sense of reassurance that I am doing something to positively contribute to the future. What I don't like about teaching is all of the non-teaching things about it. Since it's the public sector, there's so many rules and forms and red tape that you have to wade through. It's a legalistic business... counting minutes, calculating percentages, filling your gradebook with performance statistics... basically CYA-ing. I've never been good at following the rules, even though I wanted all authority-figures in my life to think that I was. :) Anywho, the point is that the new school year is starting and I'm... um... intimidated by it? There will be so much to learn and do, so many boxes to check, so many papers to fill out. And now that I'm in a huge district/school I fear that everything will become very impersonal. I miss Shelby so much right now. I think that I under-calculated the value and comfort of going back to a place/system/people I already know. I wish that my mindset right now was, "How am I going to improve this year?" instead of "Where's my room? How do I use my keys? Where do I even get keys??" Again.

But the grass is always greener, you know?

iPodPhone

It's truly addictive. The games, the internet, the sheer entertainment of it all. The only thing that makes me sad is that I can't take pictures of all of my contacts because none of them are around! My new number is 713-594-0760.

Has anyone ever thought about using Twitter?