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This school year so far has been a bit frustrating for me. I remember last year, seeing second-year (and more veteran!) teachers, and thinking, wow, they are rock stars, they have it all together. Can’t wait until that’s me. Well, it’s my second year, and that’s not me. I still feel like a screw-up most of the time.
But. But but but. I remember where I was last year at this point, how every little frustration had the potential to derail me, and how this year I have a core of calm that’s unshakable. I remember the utter exhaustion. (I’m still tired, but my…
T-2 days before students. It’s amazing how incredibly calm I am; last year at this time I remember being nervous, and of course excited. Now, I’m just excited. Everything that has happened at professional development this week has led me to believe it’s going to be an awesome year: I love my new principal, I…
read more »Obviously I did a miserable job of blogging this year; that’s what next year’s goals are for! There is no way I can adequately summarize the past few months, but my kids made awesome progress, and I was so proud to see all of my senior “babies” graduate. And I’m already incredibly excited for next…
read more »I’m doing some experimenting with my management system, since it’s not as efficient as it could be. I’ve become more lenient than I should have. However, tightening up again has so far resulted in mostly misery, which I’m taking as a sign that the approach I’ve been trying isn’t natural to me or my students,…
read more »(For some reason, either this blogging site hates Firefox or Firefox hates this site… this post was written right after winter break but I have not been able to post it until now.) It’s a new year, and the Class of 2010 is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as we…
read more »When I was a high school student, I didn’t realize that my teachers might have agonized more about my tests than I did. I get it now. Grading tests is, for me, a little like watching a sporting event. I’ve scouted the competitors but there is always a bit of uncertainity. Also inevitable frustration and…
read more »Apologies to my mother and any other loyal readers for not updating in months. Between enormous events in October and the enormity of small day-to-day trials, many times I could not find the time or the words. But I’m going to give it a shot today. I was told going in that October was the…
read more »My email inbox has been overflowing with spam comments on this blog, and I realized I hadn’t written in quite some time. The last week has been interesting, to say the least. I gave my first unit test on Friday. The scores ranged from under ten percent to over one hundred percent (since I never…
read more »In the past two weeks, I have just about tripled my total previous teaching experience in terms of minutes. I’ve also done a lot of walking (there’s a reason my legs hurt every day!) which is not something I had thought about until our speaker at professional Saturday mentioned it. Here’s the little bit of…
read more »I have now been teaching for five days. I’d like to write an insightful, eloquent post about my experiences so far, but I don’t think I have that in me at this point. So here are some scattered observations from the past week. -Right now, being a teacher also means being an actor and an…
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