Nine weeks…

It has been nine weeks since I first heard a 9-10 year old say, “Miss Martin!”  I really can’t quite believe that it has been that long.  As I sat at my desk this afternoon, entering grades for my students’ report cards, I couldn’t help but become a little nostalgic.  How quickly I have become the career women.  It nine short weeks I have gone from not knowing there was a 6am to being on the road at 6 am.  I go to bed before 10 (usually by 9:30) and have learned to live on a budget.  My days are no longer filled with hypothetical students and classrooms but with 19 living and breathing children that depend on me for structure, love, knowledge and acceptance.  They love me and then hate me, but like every fairytale, leave loving me every afternoon at 3.

I have gone from doing homework to figuring out the best way to convince my students to do the homework I assigned.  I have gone from dreaming about my first classroom to dreaming about my first week long break.  I now buy books for my kids, not for me.   I don’t have to work on the weekends anymore, but I do…spending hours looking over lesson plans and wondering what the best way to teach the lesson will be.  I read on the latest trends of teaching, feeling that I didn’t absorb enough in college. 

I feel that I am just surviving, always striving to do something, one thing better the next day.  How can I get the child who has no friends to interact with another student?  How can I get through to the student who really doesn’t want anything to do with me?  How do I work with the student that feels that they are above the rules, and therefore in no need of me?   What can I do to work with the student struggling in math?

I don’t want to be the complacent teacher, content with a mediocre class.  I want to be the teacher that strives for her students to have every opportunity to achieve success and reach it on their own means, not handed to them.  I want to be the teacher that lets her students know how much she cares for them by guiding them towards the things and people that will help them succeed.  I want to be the teacher that they want to come see in 3 years when their sister or brother is in the room.  I want to be the teacher that doesn’t give up until every possible way of helping a child is exhausted.

Nine weeks… 27 to go