You deserve it

Well it has been a while since I blogged. This summer has been a healing journey so far that is much needed. I have been able to get the pool set up, tan, read, kayak and spend time with family and friends and we are only in the 4th work so that is a lovely thing. I have also had some time to spend working on school and I am beginning my Masters next week. Lots on the go.

These last few years have been really hard on me professionally. While I have learned and grown individually and formed amazing relationships with educators from around the world I did not feel that these successes have translated to my school life. I think often teachers invest so much of themselves into their work and this last year I realized that I was not putting enough into myself to balance that scale. So going into this next school year the plan is to balance. Focus on my students and classroom AND myself. The extras can be picked up by someone else. I am excited to try new things, learn and build my practice AND put time into me. I think this summer is teaching me the importance of this shift.

In the classroom I am excited to move to more High School classes. I dipped my toes in this year and the kids created some amazing writing and reflections and I am hoping that as I move up to more senior students that the work, the writing and the discussions will be incredible. The coolest part is that these will be the first students I had the chance to teach when I came to my school and I am so excited to see what they can do. We will be going gradeless and that will be new to them, we will be working in Project Based Writing and Multigenre/Multimodal work. While students need to prepare for an awful government exam I am certain that we can do this through creative, purposeful writing exploration rather than robotic practice. Wish us luck.

The Workspace

On a personal level I have really enjoyed the reading and tanning and kayaking and working out. I am excited for things that I am allowing myself to imagine again. I will be presenting at a conference in a few weeks, I am starting a Masters program. I am looking into securing a trademark for a project I want to begin.

I am guilty of allowing others to determine my value and feeling like I need to have smaller dreams because people resent those who dream bigger. I am grateful for the examples of educators I have met that are chasing dreams and helping me see that I am worthy to go after mine.

A quick update and I hope to be a bit more frequent here as I step up my game.

Teacher friends the last few years have been tough just with Covid, add on our own stresses and struggles and this has been a lot. Take the time to care for yourself. There is not shame in choosing you. Your students will benefit and so will you. To those reading going back to school soon, good luck with the year. To the rest try to maximizing the time off you have remaining. Good luck.