It's been great being back at work and seeing old friends and meeting new teachers! I'm mentoring a new teacher this year and it's really been such a pleasure to live vicariously though her and her first days as a first year teacher. The excitement, the being so overwhelmed you're not even sure where to start, the anticipation....all great!
Which got me to thinking about what lays ahead for me. Up until this point, I never really had any desire to do anything else but be with kids, but little by little, I'm beginning to think I might like to do an instructional coach position or even teach methods classes at the college level. I know I'm not into administration, but helping new teachers develop their skills could be super fun. Not to mention that it would eliminate grading papers : )
But before I can get to that, I have a whole year's worth of work to do. Our theme for Language Arts this year is "You can change the world." We're going to have the kids do all kinds of work around social justice issues - writing picture books that deal with these kinds of issues (and free online publishing of 12 page books at Student Publishing!) They will study the Holocaust and what we can learn from that and then, pick a cause of their own interest to research. After that report is done, they have to finish it with some kind of service project. We did this whole theme last loop and the kids LOVED all of it, and they really felt like they could make a difference.
So, I guess it's no secret that I love my job. One more weekend of fun, then back at it....but I can't really call it a job when I get to hang out with friends, teach kids to be better people, and enjoy what I do on a daily basis.
Looking forward to 2012-2013!
and that is all : )
