Monday, August 20, 2012
My Bank Account Weeps
So... many... materials. So much money!! I have many packages arriving from different places this week. I'm excited to get all my new things for my classroom, but man was it expensive! There's still so much to add. I keep looking for used children's board games and I'm having a hard time. Boo. Hopefully I'll get ahold of them somewhere!
Monday, August 13, 2012
This is happening.
Well friends, it's happening. I'm teaching first grade. Last year when I started my long-term sub. job my mom suggested I start a blog while I was in the middle of one of my "I'm so stressed!" freakouts. I never really got around to it, but I thought about it a LOT. It sounded so poetic to be recording all the ups and downs of my first "classroom experience". Once the summer started and I landed my permanent classroom job I actually started this blog up and wrote a post one night.
At this point I should probably reveal a little tidbit about myself: I'm a perfectionist and I HATE messes. Pretty on-point with your vision of an elementary school teacher, right? So I wrote this long blog post, which took over an hour and a half. When I finally stopped for air I looked and read it over, and boy oh boy... was it a MESS. I'd pretty much spilled absolutely everything I'd experienced over the past 6 months long term subbing in a first grade classroom in a district I didn't like. All the victories, the trouble with mean colleagues, difficult parent interactions, the job application process... it was all there. It was like I'd thrown it all over the floor. True to form, all I wanted to do was clean it up. It was so long and awkward and heartfelt and... uncomfortable. All I wanted was to make it go away. So I did. I deleted the whole thing- an hour and a half's worth of writing! Ha!
I think I'm just going to let that be OK. I think cleaning up that "mess" might be a good starting point for this year. This is going to be my very own classroom. It's nobody else's, and it's in a district I know and love. I'm going to try to blog as much as possible about my experience, but I won't attempt to write a novel each night recounting my experience while also incorporating profound thoughts about the teaching profession. This year will get messy, sure. In the back of my head last year's bumps are still there, and I plan to use what I learned from them to strengthen my teaching in positive ways. But I don't think I need it all out there on a blog in a long-winded fashion. Today I went through the book collection I'm building for my room, and I found a Magic School Bus book. Ms. Frizzle always said, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" I'm totally on board with you, Ms. Frizzle. First grade is happening. It's going to be messy, and it's going to be glorious.
At this point I should probably reveal a little tidbit about myself: I'm a perfectionist and I HATE messes. Pretty on-point with your vision of an elementary school teacher, right? So I wrote this long blog post, which took over an hour and a half. When I finally stopped for air I looked and read it over, and boy oh boy... was it a MESS. I'd pretty much spilled absolutely everything I'd experienced over the past 6 months long term subbing in a first grade classroom in a district I didn't like. All the victories, the trouble with mean colleagues, difficult parent interactions, the job application process... it was all there. It was like I'd thrown it all over the floor. True to form, all I wanted to do was clean it up. It was so long and awkward and heartfelt and... uncomfortable. All I wanted was to make it go away. So I did. I deleted the whole thing- an hour and a half's worth of writing! Ha!
I think I'm just going to let that be OK. I think cleaning up that "mess" might be a good starting point for this year. This is going to be my very own classroom. It's nobody else's, and it's in a district I know and love. I'm going to try to blog as much as possible about my experience, but I won't attempt to write a novel each night recounting my experience while also incorporating profound thoughts about the teaching profession. This year will get messy, sure. In the back of my head last year's bumps are still there, and I plan to use what I learned from them to strengthen my teaching in positive ways. But I don't think I need it all out there on a blog in a long-winded fashion. Today I went through the book collection I'm building for my room, and I found a Magic School Bus book. Ms. Frizzle always said, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" I'm totally on board with you, Ms. Frizzle. First grade is happening. It's going to be messy, and it's going to be glorious.
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