Driving through the flat terrain

After feeling on absolute fire for the last couple of days, I have come to a flat area. It was the first day where we saw kids today. The seniors needed to re-enrol which basically meant that they needed to come in with their results and get admitted into the next level of the subjects that they wanted to do. It was such a great day in so many ways. I did reflect on how far I had come from the same day last year. Last year I felt so lost and overwhelmed as I knew no kids at all and I was not familiar with the process that they were going through. Today I felt energised to be seeing kids, sharing the excitment of their successes, and planning the year ahead in Drama together. 

So ... as I write ... I have been forced to acknowledge the good points of the day and cannot quite remember why I was feeling flat. 

I did have some disappointment. I was saddened when one of my absolute star students opted to drop drama in favour of art history. It is funny as I have nothing against other subjects but my immediate, and quite involuntary reaction was, 'Art history, ugh so boring' (to myself, not to anyone out loud I might add). Where did that horrible person come from I wonder. I would much rather be the teacher that supports all subjects, especially other smaller arts based subjects that are just as eager for students as my subject is at the moment. 

I suppose I feel a little bothered as I am feeling a little worried about my footing in the school that I am currently working at. I wonder if any other early teachers, or consecutive LTR's like me feel the same. Ugh even as I write this I am frustrated of the pointlessness of worrying about such a thing now. But...I don't know. I just get so excited about the profession, the relationships, and the work and it feels weird it been temporary in a way.

I think the answer is for me to think to myself - every investment and piece of work I do is also into my own career, and my life as a teacher. I am definately solidifying some real aspirational goals that makes moving from task to task each day really meaningful and worth it.

Looking forward to getting in front of some kids and stopping worrying about all the other crap! Oooo, I think I see a hill up ahead, flatness be gone! 

New Year - New Blog Post. It's all about instinct.

I am beginning to plan for my second year of teaching. I have zillions of more posts I could write about my year from last year. They are all sitting in either physical or digital notes somewhere waiting for my reflective attention. Why am I not addressing these first?...because I am very much in a 'moving forward' mood.

I am thinking about the classes of students that I will meet next week. I will encounter no less than 6 new lists of class names (praying hopefully for some crossover) for me to get to know, reacquaint myself with, and (re)introduce to the wonderful world of learning. I look back at the end of my last year and consider just how exhausted I was. Not only physically, but mentally, and imaginatively. I really had lost my spark...for many reasons and many reflective moments, many moments of defeat, and many successes of being a first year teacher.

Been a first year teacher is, like many things, something you will only ever do once.  (THANK GOODNESS!!!) and something that will be difficult to rival interms of energy sapping hard slog. But I have come away with so much. I think the thing that I am most thankful for is the instinct and intuition that I have been given and earned through teaching students for a year. As I sit to begin to plan I am so full of ideas because I know kind of how it is all going to pan out. This morning I wrote a note to myself that said "Make sure you plan many diagnostic activities this week as you do not yet know this bunch of kids" - this is great. I feel really comforted and confident that I have developed this instinct.

I am also unbelievably excited about moving forward with the two groups of drama kids that I HAVE already taught. I cannot wait to introduce them to deeper material. The instinct here comes from the fact that I can start to pick ability over lazyness. And I can differentiate and challenge those who I know can be pushed, becuse their committment and dedication to the subject fills the room and nearly pushes me out the door. This is a nice observation to have made.

Do not reinvent the wheel! This is my current mantra. Oh the temptation to sit and read 5 plays and then carefully plan out a unit is high. But the reality is, I will dawdle, contemplate, procrastinate, agitate over this idea for a whole week, not really get anything concrete sorted and get behind on many of my other necessary tasks. I walked in the sunshine this morning (which was a nice antidote to I do NOT want to get out of bed issues) and thought to myself, that part of the unit worked really well last year. How can I take that work that I have already done and repeat and extend it to make it stronger. I have already moaned in paragraph above how 'hard' it all was (sorry, probably a little OTT with the 'woe is me'), so I may as well make all that previous work worth it.

Last year I was lucky enough to splutter out through an embarrassingly large amount of emotion to my bosses, most of which are not into emotion, that I really wanted to teach an English class this year. They listened and the result is that I have an year 11 literature class (in my school speak this means they are the extension kids) - Well Miss N, be careful what you wish for. I am unbelievably excited about this, as I can try my hand at teaching a novel, film, poetry....but man oh man am I scared. So I am preparing myself in this instance to find new instinct. This is new territory, but I can look back to last year and realise that new territory is both inevitable and OK.

It is a professional goal of mine to blog much more frequently. And today I am sitting in the library with my tablet and my wireless keyboard which is magic. So blogging has become easy peasy and portable and thus, hopefully, something I can, and will do more often.
In the meantime, my planning brain is going to seek more sunshine.