Grateful Friday

Miriam made these signs for outside our classrooms and they crack us up every time we see them.  Third grade Thelma with the lace collar and tentative smile will be my companion all year.

It has been a hard week.  I have been exhausted and felt sick and felt stressed about being exhausted and sick.  How am I going to do this?!?

My classroom has come together.  It's all going to be OK.  I met with my team yesterday and it was a productive and validating meeting.  Over lunch we chatted about how hard this week has been.  It isn't just me!  I blame lymphoma, but this is truly just how it is.  There is so much to do and so much to think about and it wears you down.  (Having lymphoma and being in my 50s are not helping.)

We talked about all the facets of being a teacher.  

We need to organize the physical space + make it welcoming and appealing.  (This year we needed to do a lot of cleaning too.) 

We need to organize our schedule.  There never seems to be enough time.  I would happily have the day be one hour longer.  

We need to organize materials.  I can't tell you how many stacks of books/workbooks/packets have been delivered to my door.  I need to figure out what to do with it all.  

We need to think about the class procedures.  There are so many: class jobs, cleaning up, passing out papers, sharpening pencils...how are we going manage all of that?  

We need to get to know our students and establish a class culture.  

We need to encourage a growth mindset and make our classroom feel like a place where it is safe to make mistakes and where we respect each other.  That doesn't just happen.  

We need to manage behavior, including the students who have serious trauma and serious behavior challenges.  

We need to figure out what to do about the students that come to us with zero English.  

We need to figure out how to intervene with students who are struggling to master the work.

Finally, we need to, you know, plan the lessons to teach.  That seems like the main thing, and it is, but it can't happen without all the other stuff in place.  I am grateful to not be a first year teacher.  We've done all this before.  It is just slightly different every year: new curriculum, new schedules, new ideas for improvement so it is a sort of self inflicted mental load.

I am grateful for my team.  I am grateful that we're in this together.  We lean on each others' strengths and help each other.  We talk over and around each other and it gets chaotic, but we are doing it.  We will continue to do it!

I am grateful for the other teachers in the school.  I stopped by 4th grade.  I asked how they are doing.  Nicole said, "I feel pretty chill.  Maybe too chill.  It will probably hit me tomorrow."

Then she handed me the disclosure document I hadn't printed yet so I could make copies for third grade.  

I love being on the same side as these wonderful people, all working for the same cause.  We want to see each other succeed and it shows.

I am grateful for Adam and Mark keeping me going this week.  This morning I was outlining to Adam the bulletin board that I can't figure out.  It is more of an information/graphic design question than just decorating.  I feel confident that I could make a cute bulletin board that I would like.  I get flummoxed when I am trying to design information in a way that is easy to understand and also doesn't look like a crazy person did it. 

Right now, it looks like a crazy person did it.

Adam told me that he would come to my classroom tonight and help me.  He is really good at that kind of thing.  I told him that if he had told me that at 3:00 AM, I would have gone back to sleep instead of trying to figure it out.

(Why am I like this and also I am grateful for Adam!)

I am grateful that it rained a lot yesterday.  A real downpour.  After, we opened up the windows and the air was glorious.  The sky was also pretty glorious.

I am grateful that I'm not getting a bone marrow biopsy before the first day of school.  I don't need to schedule surgery and a CT scan and a PET scan.  I just need to teach school.

That is something enormous to be grateful for!