Reflection

Tomorrow is the last day of school in my first year of teaching.

1.     I applied for 21 jobs and had 3 interviews. I got my job 3 weeks before school started, while I was still working 3 part time jobs. I was completely unprepared to start the school year. I faked it for the entire first semester. I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I cried a lot. I spent a lot of brainstorming and redoing lesson plans, classroom management strategies, gradebooks (never mind that we don’t use traditional grading or behavior management strategies at our school). I tried to be productive over fall break, but I was so drained I just slept.

2.     I fake that I know what I’m doing better. I have consistent gradebooks. my lessons align better with my standards and school wide themes.

3.     I was starting to feel confident about entering my second year of teaching, and then I got thrown a curve ball.

4.     I will be teaching K-12 PE and health. I am scared to death about it and don’t know how I will be able to teach anything with so many variations on a theme to teach. How will I assess students to know when to change what I am doing. How can I possibly develop relationships with students when I have so many and only 40 minutes with them a week.

5.     I feel as though I’m going to be a first year teacher all over again.

6.     Why the change? Politics.

7.     I wrote about trying not to take politics personally back in November. But, it is so hard not to, when it’s politics that is making it harder and harder to educate the whole child.  When politics is what cuts their PE time from 165 minutes a week to 40. When I no longer get to teach Health and PE, but an integrated “wellness” class (I know to some this sounds great – but I can tell you why it’s not).

My students have been fantastic guinea pigs. I have to thank them for making my first year rich and colorful. I have to thank my colleagues for being INCREDIBLY supportive and wise. I have to thank Nathan, my family, and Rachel for listening to me rant, cry, brainstorm, and reflect.

I did a lot of changing and growing this year as an educator. Here’s to the next teaching adventure. I am curious to see where it leads.