Year 5

My 5th Year of teaching started last week, Thursday to be exact, and I feel like a whole lot of things and emotions have happened since then. In many ways, this year began a lot like all of the others, with me thinking, "This is the year I will finally feel completely ready by the time the kids come!", And just like all the other years, I totally wasn't.

One of the craziest things about teaching is that, no matter how long you've been doing it, every year feels brand new, and you always have the sense that you're not quite sure what you're doing. This year especially feels that way to me. I'm in a new grade, 5th, which I'm really thrilled about. I enjoy teaching upper elementary so much, and I even had the chance to move up with some of my 4th graders from last year. On top of that, I'm also switching roles. For the last four years, I've worked as a special education teacher, and this year, I'm a general education teacher. Basically, this is a whole new world for me.

This year started out pretty hectic. I was almost late on the first day of school, because why not make the morning just a little more challenging? I had decided to take a cab so I can get there extra, EXTRA early to finish cleaning my room and collect myself before I met my new students and parents. But of course, it took me over 30 minutes to even get a taxi to pick me up, and I was literally sprinting into the building right as school began. Luckily, I was able to make it upstairs before my kids and I had about 2 minutes to throw some left over mess in the closet and shove a muffin in my mouth. Needless to say, I was not relaxed or calm in any way. But once they walked in, with their new, crisp backpacks filled with notebooks full of blank pages and pencils ready to be sharpened, with their eager and nervous faces wondering, "How hard 5th grade is going to be?" and "Will my teacher be nice?", I had no choice but to smile, relax, and breathe... with a mouth full of muffin.

So, maybe my classroom is still a mess, maybe I'm still figuring out exactly how to teach a new grade, and be in this new role, and I'll probably make a few mistakes along the way. But that's okay. Because that's what teaching is. It's staying up late re-teaching yourself 5th grade math, researching lesson ideas, looking up strategies, reading articles. It's spending an hour planning the most amazing lesson, only to have it go horribly wrong the next day. It's thinking you have everything under control, then realizing, holy shit, you definitely don't.

It's not always knowing what your doing, but always knowing that you'll try again, harder, tomorrow.

Image Credit