Sunday, August 18, 2013

Ready or Not...Here it Comes!

It's back to school time and this time of year my brain is packed with questions and to do lists...did I get a class set of every supply I purchased? Is my lunch packed? Is the alarm set? Is it set loud enough for it to wake me up at 5:00 a.m.? What are Hoda Woman and Kathy Lee going to talk about while I'm at work? How is summer already over? And most importantly...what am I going to wear for the first day? The manic teacher brain has turned on and there's no stopping it...not even for sleep. Here's how my "sleep" went last night....start saying my prayers & fall asleep halfway through, sleep for a few hours, have a nightmare about showing up to school without my room set up, toss and turn, fall asleep for a few minutes, wake up sweating, stick my foot out from under the covers (not the whole leg because you know creeps hiding under the bed might grab it), fall back asleep for another couple hours, have another nightmare about waking up late on Monday...repeat, repeat, repeat. I've probably burned any hope of sleeping tonight by taking a nap a golf induced slumber around 2, but holy moly whenever the hubs watches it on TV I instantly feel the urge to sleep.

I was doing a pretty bang up job with staying calm throughout all of last week's Teacher Workdays/Staff Development days.  My room got put together and my to do list started to whittle down to just a few random things that aren't priorities for the first day. Then Meet the Teacher night hit and BAM! My life in the Land of the Never Ending Summer (ahem, land of denial) ended. It's go time peeps! My bubble of calm zen like behavior has popped and I'm back to my usual hyperactive/super talkative/crazy self. In a little over 12 hours I'll have a brand new crop of 20 first graders to tend to (yesss 20...ermergerrrd I don't know where I'm going to put them all). What I really want to do is run circles in the back yard because my brain is frazzled, but I'll take the advice of my mom (and forgo the trip to the loony bin because surely my neighbors would be concerned if I was running circles in the backyard)- -take it one day at a time. With that said, let's back it up to the point of impact at which my bubble of zen popped. . .Meet the Teacher Night.

I've blogged about Meet the Teacher Night a few different times. My plans were made & things were executed perfectly. Cookies were made from scratch, bagged, and tagged...Signs were framed, the table was set, and thanks to Wal-Mart (of all places) I was able to make a pretty fabulous center piece of flowers. Don't get me wrong, I was working until the very last second to get my room just right, but everything turned out pretty perfect-- yes I'm tooting my own horn! The hardest thing about MTT Night is always figuring out what to wear. I have long decided that my love of chevron {{ok, ok, obsession}} is nothing to be ashamed of. So when I laid eyes on a certain chevron dress I knew it 1. had to get in my closet and 2. had to be my MTT Night outfit. Here's my MTT Night in a nutshell...
There's something magical about MTT Night...it's the first time you'll meet your new babies and the first time you'll see your old babies as not yours anymore. For me it's always a little bitter sweet. I remember feeling so ready to be with a fresh new group at the end of the year. I was so ready to love from afar my can't stop won't stop kids, but on mtt night I ALWAYS want my old babies back.  They have after all taken a piece of my heart with them when they walked out of my door on the last day of first grade. I will undoubtedly  always remember and love them as though they're my own. I know this to be true because my loves I had 6 years ago are now big 5th graders and I still love them with everything I have. Seeing my old babies is only party of the magic...of course meeting my new crop is just as exciting.
A million questions always swirl around in my head as I busily prepare for the new group. What is this year going to be like? Will they love me? Will I love them? How will I ever love them as much as I loved my babies last year? Will they love each other? && especially in my case how old will the parents think I am this year? After meeting my kids (all but 5) I learned that they're pretty energetic...all of them. They're stinking adorable && their views on school vary. Most were excited...a few not so enthused...and some were absolutely terrified because they had a horrific year in Kindergarten with a not so nice teacher. It breaks my heart into a million pieces to see a child crying because they feared going back to a classroom...it gives me inspiration to not be "that teacher."
 
I definitely have my work cut out for me to help them come to love school and learning again, but I've done it before and hopefully I'll do it again. It pays to be a hyperactive/super talkative/crazy teacher sometimes...in faculty meetings not so much...but in the classroom, yes! I get it when my babies can't sit still for another second. I can see the wiggles boiling up inside of them ready to burst out at any given second. I get it when they just have to tap their pencil or reach over and "whisper" to the person next to them in the middle of center rotations. I say "whisper" because very few 6 year olds have mastered the ability to whisper...it's more like a muted holler. Even though I "get it" I need to work on having patience when these things happen. It's been years since I was in their shoes so it's easy to forget how interesting a shoe lace is opposed to the read aloud I picked for them.
 
Until next time live, love and think happy back to school thoughts! :)
 
 

1 comment:

  1. Looks like you did a great job! Good luck to a great start on a new school year!
    Jamie
    teachingtidbit.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete