I am Ms. Lee!

Looking back over my summer blogs I can sense my enthusiasm for teaching and doing well—that has not changed. What has changed is my ability to have enough time to accomplish my goals. The only sad thing about teaching is time—I NEVER have enough. Never. Throughout the last three months I have felt like I have let every one down—my family, my students, my friends, myself. It is a pretty lousy feeling. I didn’t realize how little time I would have to go the library, pay bills, do laundry, etc.

I give my best everyday, but then at the end of the day something has to give. I spend most of my nights grading essays and lesson planning—and that doesn’t leave much time for much of a personal life or really anything else. I can’t wait for Christmas break—so I can for once be truly ahead in lesson planning and really assess what my students need to work on most. Also, I just want to read more about reading. My students present such diverse problems with reading. I feel that I have not adequately addressed their needs. I go to bed worrying every night that they will leave my class not experiencing what reading really is—that little narrator in your head. I mean if I can help my students become better readers—to me—I will be helping them for life. No joke. In the summer, I didn’t know where to start gathering material and resources—now I know exactly what I need.
I was very nervous about teaching in the summer—now it is like second nature to talk to students. That nervousness faded around the second day of school! I remember being frustrated by making mistakes—now I make them all the time and they turn into learning experiences that I easily laugh about with my students. Esp. one day when I accidentally started writing in French! I can’t start a lesson unless the objectives are on the board—before it was easy to forget. I can grab a stack of papers and roughly estimate how many sheets there are. I can look over thirty desks and tell who doesn’t have their book open to right page. Now, it is easier to tell who “gets it” and who needs a little one on one. Over the summer, I had no idea what a sixth grader was like—now I can write a book about them!
It isn’t that I have changed—my life has changed. I really love teaching, even if it makes me forget to pay bills or do laundry. I never imagined how good it would feel to really have students learn and become “smarter.” I am always telling them, I love hearing their brains get bigger when they have really caught on. I remember my first blog about how weird it was that students called me “Ms. Lee” – now I feel like that is who I am. Teaching really isn’t a job—it is just what you are. I am teacher. I am Ms. Lee!