A Week in the Life

This past week was Teacher Appreciation Week, so parents and administration spoiled us with all kind gifts and snacks. Getting up on Monday I had this bright idea that I was going to do some photo documentation of a week in the life a teacher. It's usually about this time of year that I do an end-of-the-year post, so I thought it would be fun to go through it in pictures.

We'll see how well it works.

Monday's are always hard so I tried to make myself look presentable. Sometimes how you look changes your attitude or something. Also, I like when my kids tell me I'm pretty because I'm shallow that way. :)

Sitting in traffic on the bridge and actually put together on a Monday morning. Hooray!

Making my coworkers take pictures of me in my doorway to prove that I looked halfway decent on Monday morning. 

Cookies on Monday morning? Yes, please! 

Yes, I am eating ice cream in my classroom in the dark...alone.

Cup number three? Or four? I've lost count.

                                                           

                                               It isn't always easy to workout at home.

Tuesday! Tuesdays should be easier but they totally aren't. As the week goes on it gets harder to get up and get moving. This is mostly because I love sleep. There aren't a lot of pictures for Tuesday because most of the time I'm, you know, teaching. 

Almost ready? Maybe

Second coffee picture. Coffee is life and you can't tell me any different.

Set up for grading in my home office/guest room. Most of my work gets done at home because sometimes I just can't find the time during the school day to get it done. Also, here I can work in my pajamas. 

The view from the other side of my computer, which is what I'd rather be doing because books are life (like coffee). 

Super proud of myself for trying to get into shape this week. 

Wednesday! There's literally one picture from school on Wednesday and it's this one. The end of the year means testing and testing means we switch schedules with the upper grades. This means that I have a long afternoon with my kiddos. I covertly took this pic as they cleaned up math centers. Teacher's tired, y'all. 

Another run and some new sneaks for me! 

Trying to grade papers but being emotionally compromised by a superhero show at the same time. 

Ugh, Thursday! We're so close to the end but really not, you know? 

I like to match.

Glad to see you're using your time wisely, boys.

FRIDAY! Friday is the best because it's the weekend, but also the worst because there is SO MUCH TO DO STILL. 

Friday also means the end of Teacher Appreciation Week and that means presents! 

It was Cinco de Mayo so we made sangria and called it fruit punch. (We're learning how to measure liquids, okay?)

Still awake/alive at lunchtime on Friday. Go me!

I'm in love with all of this superhero stuff. It's like the theme was made for me. 

Tacos with my people! We didn't choose tacos because of Cinco de Mayo, but because we had buy one get one free coupons. 

We also took to the theaters for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Chris Pratt. 

So, I didn't get quite as many pictures of myself as I'd like. (Sad, I know.) It was a fun experiment, though. I got pretty busy toward the middle of the week with the whole teaching thing. And the grading. And the wrangling of small children. 

That's what a week of my life kind of looks like, I guess. It isn't glamorous, but it isn't bad. The best part is that I get to spend my days doing what I love with people that I enjoy. There's a little less than a month left of school and we're all getting pretty restless. I feel it and I know they feel it. So, like I say at the end of every year: make the most of this time with your students. You never know what kind of impact you'll have on their lives. I know I'm changed every year. 

Here's Baby Groot waving goodbye because I literally just want to keep staring at him forever. 

HE'S SO CUTE.

Where Your Light Shines Through

I've been working on this post for a few months now but could never seem to get the words right. "Working on it" pretty much means that I wrote a title, a sentence, and then forgot all about it. It's been a while since I've thrown any words out in the world so I figured it was time.

We've all got baggage, yeah? We've all got things that bring us down, keep us down, and hurt us.  Life is hard. That's nothing we didn't already know. There will always be something that gets in the way of our happiness, but what you do with the hurt and the pain...that's where the light is.

UPDATE: I have once again stepped away from this post and now I'm back again. We'll see if I finish this time.

Okay. I wanted to write this for a few reasons. I try my best to stay positive in tough life situations and I like to share my experiences to help others.

UPDATE #2: I tried to work on this a couple of days ago and it didn't work. I will persist!

I feel like this is the time of year when things get crazy for everyone. It's almost spring break for me and I literally feel like I'm running around trying to put out little fires all day long. Sometimes I feel like I'm on fire.*

Fire is not what I mean by "light", however. By "light" I mean showing your goodness and positivity. It's so easy to complain and bitch about stuff. So. Easy. Shining your light is the hard part. So often we get lost in our thoughts and lives that we forget as teachers, as friends, as family members, as humans that there is always an opportunity to show kindness and love to others. We don't know if what we're going through will help others and we get so focused on ourselves that we fail to see that someone else might be experiencing the same thing. 

I don't mean that you should go out and shout your problems to the world at all. Most of the time we try to hide those things anyway. I think what I mean is how you react to a situation let's others see different parts of you. What they see, and what you show, might be the thing that they need. 

I know that I am not the perfect example of this, but I also know that I'm trying. There have been so many changes (good and bad) in my life in the past year that my emotions are constantly going a million different ways. I struggle every day with so many feelings! I do try (and fail miserably sometimes) to be that light that others need. I know I'm not that good at it sometimes, but I think that putting in the effort is part of it, too. 

Being someone who others can talk to or helping without being asked is a great way to shine a little bit of light on someone's day. Sometimes if we're having a rough day in class one of my kiddos will just come up and hug me like they know it's just what I need. A lot of the times it is. Also, a lot of the times I need them to stay in their seats. ;) 

Even when it's tough to smile or laugh or help, you never know when you might be the light that someone needs. 

Keep shining. 

*"This girl is on fiiiiiire." 

Sometimes I sing this to my class when I'm mad. 

Take a Day

I don't like not going to work. Like, some people enjoy a day off. They relax, read, shop...whatever. I don't. I worry.

Why?

Because I love my job. I love my kids. I feel guilty when I leave them.

Except for yesterday, that is.

I guess it comes to a point where you literally have to take a day off. You have to get your mindset right because everything feels wrong and everything is off and OH MY GOSH, WILL YOU JUST STOP TALKING is constantly happening in your head.

Yeah, that was me on Thursday. I worried for the majority of the day about whether or not I would have everything ready. Would my sub know what to do if I just wrote this, would the kids remember to do xyz...stuff like that.

Then it was time to go home and I just decided that it would be okay.

It's okay to take a day off because we teachers, me included, are humans.

Can you believe it?

I know some of you reading this won't think it really matters if I take a day off from work or not. You might not get the stress that we teachers deal with on a daily basis. Maybe you think that we just hang out and have fun all day and, sure, sometimes that's the case. Often times, it isn't though.

Teaching, in itself is not hard. It isn't difficult to plan, talk, and grade. It's not hard to pass out papers, put on band-aids, or reprimand.

What's hard is trying to do right by the kids that people have entrusted with you. It's hard to get to know them and to understand why they do certain things. Knowing how to teach them is hard. Understanding their actions is harder.

Forgiving them? Loving them? Man, that's easy.

I don't have kids of my own. I have twenty-three other people's children in my care. I see my friends and I hear them talk about their kids and their struggles and I think "Wow, that's hard". But, truth is, teachers have those struggles too. We struggle with when to discipline and when to let is slide. When to coddle and when to let them be independent.

It's a hard job, but it can be so rewarding.

So, I took a day. I could feel the stress of the past couple weeks of testing, mixed up schedules, license renewing, and just life settling on my shoulders.

It was a nice day. A greatly needed day. I've come to realize more and more this year that I need to do that. I need to take care of myself if I want to be the best teacher I can be. If I'm constantly focused on them, on the job, on anything else...then I'm not focused on me. That sounds selfish, but at the same time I know I'm not my best person when I'm stressed out over things or frustrated about, oh, everything. Thankfully, I have the best team ever who take care of my kiddos when I'm gone and tell me not to worry even though they know I will. (Love you guys. :P)

But, all that stress aside, I got to spend some time with one of my favorite people Thursday and then Friday my sister and I went to Disney World.

Honestly, who did you think I meant? GO SEE THIS MOVIE.
This also accurately describes life. 

It was nice and stress free. Well, if you don't count the stress I have over superhero movies, traffic, and the multitudes of people at Disney.

I could be overheard saying, more than once, "At least I'm not at work" and my sister would just shake her head. 

I missed my kids, but I'm glad I took a day. Hopefully I'll get back on Monday feeling refreshed and we'll be ready to take on the week together.  (Also, I have, like, 80 PTO hours, sooo...)

Also also, I woke up this morning with a lovely cold so I'm glad I had a day of fun before I started feeling like death. 

A Grateful Heart

As most of you know a lot has happened in the past few weeks concerning my family. It's been just over three weeks since my stepfather unexpectedly passed away. I am not always so eloquent when I speak, so I thought I'd try to put some of my feelings into words and throw them into the vastness of the internet, if you'll let me.

These three weeks have been hard. This is not something that I thought would ever happen to me, my sister, or our family. Honestly, I don't think anyone expects someone they love to die, but it happens.

I was five years old when Tim first came into my life. For most of my years I would argue that I was actually six, just to make him mad and because I wanted to be right. For those of you who don't know, I have a dad whom I love a lot. We have a great relationship, but Tim was a huge part of my life growing up. He helped my mother support me financial, put me through private school, and eventually helped me when I went to college.

Some people think that's what matters, but it doesn't. Tim loved me from day one and, honestly, the feeling was mutual. As a child I never longed for love or affection. I come from a big, crazy, loving family and he only added to that. I was never his stepdaughter and always his daughter. Even after he and my mom split up. Even after our relationship was strained.

At his funeral the people who spoke talked about his contagious smile, giving nature, and big heart. How he could talk to anyone and make really, really stupid jokes all the time.

Okay, maybe not that last one, but they weren't his teenage daughter, were they?

Tim was charismatic and people loved him.

Especially me.

Our relationship was on the mend within the past few years, and I am grateful for that. I'm grateful for the few times we got to see each other or for the phone calls we exchanged. I'll never forget the last conversation I had with him or the fact that the last thing I told him was "I love you".

Life is short and fragile. It sucks and it's beautiful. If I've learned anything from this it's to not take anything for granted. My sister and I keep having these types of conversations that usually end with something like "he wouldn't want that". It's a cliched phrase to use, but we know how he would have wanted us to live our lives. He would want us to be happy. To love. To be kind. To be grateful.

I am grateful.

I'm grateful for the time that I got to spend with Tim. I'm grateful for my OCD cleaning tendencies that could have only been inherited from him (as my mother tells me). I'm grateful for the arguments we used to have deciding who loved the other more (there's a trick, I'll teach you). I am so, so grateful for all of the people in my life because of Tim. (Like, number one is my sister...but don't tell her that.)

Some days I wake up and I don't remember that he's gone. I know that there will always be days like that. This isn't something that we can get used to, but it isn't something that's going to go away. It's hard to realize that life goes on around you. The earth still spins even though you feel like it's stopped.

I am grateful for the people in my life who help me keep spinning. For my mom and sister and our amazingly supportive families. My friends, coworkers, and even my kiddies at school.

I'm grateful for a church family who supports me, prays for me, and with me...who loves me and reminds me that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me, also. We have been leaning heavily on our faith more than ever, thankful that we have such a firm foundation and such strong beliefs.

There is so much life to love and embrace and, as cheesy as it sounds, I hope you don't waste it. I hope I don't waste it either.

Thanks for reading.

Love you most. ;) 

XOXO

The Time is Now

There's a Kid President video that talks about how now is the time to be awesome. Now is the time to show kindness, to do something good, to be your best self.

In light of recent events around the world this weekend, I'm going to reiterate that statement.

The time is now, friends.

It's time to let go of our pettiness and anger.

It's time to love.

We have been watching this world fall apart for months, even years. Lives are threatened and ended every single day because of race or religion or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. People are dying because they left their homes and went about their normal day.

It isn't fair that these things happen and, more than that, it isn't right. We see these events on our news every day and we ignore them or argue about them. We fight about who is right or wrong, argue about race and religion, but do we help anything by doing that?

The answer is no, people.

By posting those arguments and by choosing sides we don't do anything but continue to harm. To me, there is only one side we need to choose:

Life.

I'm on the side of life, what about you?

Not only am I on the side of life, I'm on the side of love.

I have been in the position where I wanted to hate in my own personal life and it got me nowhere. Okay, that's a lie. It got me depressed and angry. That's what hate does. Hate solves nothing and it only brings a person down. If we continue to show hatred then nothing will ever change.

My pastor shared an amazing message about this today. We, as humans, carry so many emotions and when we hear of terrible things there are many, many reactions we can have. We can hate and want revenge, but in the end that isn't going to help anything. The only way we are going to change anything, including ourselves is to love. We can spread that love, share the light, be the light with the world. Be there for those who are sad and suffering. We can pray for peace for all of those and hope. We can hope for things to be better one day.

Choosing love isn't always easy, though. One of my favorite quotes actually comes from the Harry Potter series (that should not surprise anyone). It's this:

"We must all face the choice between what is right, and what is easy." 

That's pretty heavy stuff. Choosing love isn't easy, but it's right. Hoping for something better in trying times isn't easy, but it helps. Forgiveness...man, that's a tough one...but it's right.

Maybe we aren't ready to forgive, but in the meantime there are other things we can do. There are other things to focus on than hatred against others.

As a Christian, I know I am called to love and I know I know I know it's something that I struggle with sometimes. But now, today, I feel that calling so very strongly.

Even if you aren't a Christian, as a human, we should be ready to lift others up no matter what the color of their skin, how they worship, or what they believe.

I'm going to try to do that this week. I hope you will too.

No Man is an Island

I've been playing around with the idea for this post for a few months. Probably since before the end of last school year and I just couldn't find the words to make it work. I don't know if these are the words that are going to make it work, but I'm going to try.

This weekend my sister and I went on kind of a "spiritual binge" at Rock the Universe (a two-night Christian music festival at Universal Studios) and a lot of it was incredibly eye-opening.

I titled this post "No Man is an Island" for a couple of reasons:

#1: It's a song by one of my very favorite bands Tenth Avenue North.

#2: It's a song that speaks to me about life. My life now, and what my life used to be like.

#3: It's a cool title.

Okay, so I get a lot of flack from people who think I'm kind of cranky and moody and, well, you get the idea. Sometimes I can be those things, but most of the time I try really, really hard not to be.

See, there was a time in my life when I was really cranky. Like...

Mean.

Angry.

Hateful.

I don't want to be those things anymore, so I do my best to be...nice. A lot of the time I'm just really sarcastic and people don't get it. I'm working on that too.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is that if I didn't have people in my life to keep me balanced I would still be that person. So many things have changed since my life was like that. I remember so vividly my very first evaluation at the end of my first year of teaching. My observer mentioned that my mentor teachers said something along the lines of me "not working well with others".

That was my first reaction and my initial feeling. Of course, we always want to blame others for our mistakes because that's easier. It's easier not to feel accountable for anything, including our own faults. It's taken me a while to get through that initial evaluation. I think about it every year when I start fresh with my team. I think about how we share ideas, triumphs, challenges...and I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I'm not alone and that I have people who have my back. 

I feel like this goes with so many other parts of my life, though. I love to be alone, but I know that it's important to have people to support you. For me, the change started when I began attending church regularly. It had been so long since I'd let anyone into my life that it was kind of scary. But, here I was reconnecting with my best friend, making new friends, and welcoming God back into my life. 

I know that getting back into church is way turned my life around. I know that committing to a life with Christ is what helped get me over whatever I was dealing with. (I think I'm mostly over it?) 

Because of that I'm able to share my life with others. Because of that I know I'm not alone. I think it's important to find your people, no matter where you are. I have a lot of people and I'm so, so grateful for all of them. 

One of the things that stuck with me the most this weekend was something Mike Donehey, the lead singer for Tenth Avenue North said. I can't remember the exact quote, but it he was talking about wanting to be used by God in any way possible and how important it was to not look down on others or judge others because we think we are better than them. I think that's so important, and it's one of the things I struggle with everyday. It's not easy to admit that, but it's true. 

I have people to keep me in check everywhere I turn. There are so many things that I need help with and I'm glad that my eyes are finally open to that. I'm thankful to have a family that keeps me on my toes, people who help me be a better teacher, lifegroups that help me be a stronger Christian, friends to be honest with me when it matters most. 

We are not islands. We can't do life alone. I'm thankful everyday for the people I get to do life with.   

Remember that next time you think I'm being mean.

That last part was a joke. 

Here's the video for this lovely song: