Huh, Fall Semester's done

I'm stuck at home and have been since the beginning of "Icemageddon" on Sunday. I've left the house for a grand total of 2.5 hours since then...once in the sleet/snow flurries just to be out of the house for an hour. I walked to the only open convenience store in a 6 block radius. I didn't fall even once!

AISD has been closed since Monday, first for MLK Day and now because of the Winter Storm "gripping" the Hill Country and basically making it impossible to drive anywhere without getting intimate with an immovable object like a tree or telephone pole or stalled car. So I've decided to reflect on my first 4.5 months of teaching.

For the most part, I do not completely suck at it! Many of my kids like me, which surprises me, and not too many hate my guts - if they do, I don't know about it. I've got a group of girls who hang out in my room and a group of boys who will actually talk to me and try to make me laugh. I genuinely like almost all of my kids and even the annoying ones are funny in their own unique ways. These are great kids and I enjoy working with them.

I was reading my last post and I've got a good chunk of my discipline issues under control - even 3rd period no longer drives me nuts. I finally figured out that I can just toss the troublemakers out for the class period, and then still hold them responsible for the material they miss. It clicked one day that while I'm responsible for the learning of 120 kids, I am not responsible for their obnoxious behavior and I don't have to put up with it. Yay, me! Plus, I have a habit of just telling them that too. It's all on them. Realizing that makes me feel so much better and more confident.

In the interests of full disclosure, I still suck at lesson planning and 85% of the time only vaguely have an idea of what I'm doing. Crazy. Occasionally I'll ask the science teacher across the hall how she's doing (she's new too) and find out that she feels the same way. That makes me feel better. Apparently that's the norm for new teachers. I kinda feel sorry for these kids because they're the unfortunate recipients of my enormous learning curve...but amazingly enough, they seem to be learning. Kids are amazing like that - they learn even though I'm not sure that I'm teaching them anything.

I have to say that I really love what I'm doing. It's not boring, it's hard but not too hard, and even the administrative work is only annoying when I'm not sure what I'm doing and why. I've known for years that I wanted to teach but it's great to have it confirmed as the right, possibly even perfect, job for me. I definitely don't want to do anything else.

Now if only I could leave the house and get back to work, I'd be happy...or at least immensely less bored.