Accomplishment, work, roses and stuff

It has now been a week since I finished my first year of teaching.

Possibly because I spent the week frantically packing my kitchen into boxes, it still does not seem very real. I have celebrated, yes. The boyfriend brought me my favorite jellybeans, my parents took me out to dinner, and my father gave me gorgeous red roses. Apparently I really did finish up this year.

I'm not a person who gloats easily over achievements. I wish I were. I went through my teacher credentialling program with a woman (who I should get in touch with), who expects to do well, or as well as needed, at everything she does, and therefore when she pulls off something difficult, she is pleased with herself and tells people about how cool she is. Me, I count up the number of shoes that have dropped, over and over, trying to figure out if there is one more left up there I oughta worry about. But I envy her approach. When I do something difficult, I more often see the failings, the inability to do it perfectly, than the fact I pulled it off at all.

This was not an easy year. But it's over, and I did it, they want me to come back next year. (Delete several disparaging comments from the self-doubting mind HERE). Now I have six or seven weeks to do other things--move, get settled in my new home, get started on my M.A. field project, do homework for my teacher 'induction' program that I allowed myself to skip during the year, and lesson plan for the fall. Oh, and learn to drive. And I have a week's training for the program I teach. Looking forward to that, actually.

And maybe unclench a little from the knot this year tied me into. Eat popcorn in the evenings, go running in the morning, come back and daven and drink coffee. Have a little time to figure out who I turned into while I was running on the hamster wheel and trying to get my students through the year.

Next year I want things to be different, and I think they will be. I'm going to make sure I have a printer at the school--oh to be able to write a quiz and PRINT IT OUT, not e-mail it to myself at home. I want to walk in on the first day of class prepared, not frantic. I want class rules that work. I think I can. I think I can.