Sunday, June 05, 2005

Trying times

Erich took the leap of faith and made plans to quite work, go back to school, and for us to live on my income...
This meant me teaching summer school. Summer school is really a different world. It is not Carver where I teach during the year and my coworkers were not very accepting of me. What a rough time I had at first. I was the teacher they would give the evil eye to! I was used to frolicking down the halls at Carver with my kids, singing, laughing, having fun while learning (isn't that what makes lifetime learners....?). This was very unappreciated my the foreboding elementary teachers. I really had to learn to find my place where they wanted me while balancing fun learning and quite hallway walking. It wouldn't have been so bad in a smaller school. The location of summer school was a HUGE school. I literally had to walk a mile to get to my class every morning. Imagine the torture of transitioning 20 five year old kids around and around this blasted big school and having to stay quite the entire time.... TORTURE! However, once again I didn't let it get the better of me, I kissed butt (not in the selling my soul kind of way) to my summer school principals, put on my mean hallway teacher face (so the other teachers knew i was "serious"), and taught my little heart out behind closed doors the way I wanted. It was worth not letting the system get the better of me. I really enjoyed bonding even more with some of my kids I had had all through the school year and learning more of life's good lessons. It's not what they throw at you.... it's what you do with it that counts.