The School Year Cometh

So apparently tomorrow is the first day of school at my old school.

It’s really strange because now there are a couple of ACE teachers there whom I have never met. And they are having their first day tomorrow.

I remember how scared I was on my first day… week… month… of teaching.

Year of teaching.

So, for any current or past ACE teachers – any teachers at all – who are reading this: I am thinking of you, and praying for you! You got this. Love on those kids and make some mistakes.

Here’s some inspiration from one of my favorite teachers of all time, Tyler Hester:

[UPDATE]

The school year cometh for me, too.

I spent four or five hours in my new classroom today, rearranging desks, making signs, revising my syllabus, sitting in different student desks so I could see what they will be seeing on August 25th…

…putting up Calvin and Hobbes cartoons in appropriate places…

I am so. excited. and. so. nervous.

I feel like it’s hard to explain to a lot of people. “Didn’t last year go well? Why do you have to reinvent everything? Use the stuff that worked before.”

Because I know I can do it better.

I’m designing a new late work policy, a new homework policy, a tighter consequences system… Yes, everything worked okay last year, but I didn’t like it that some kids just didn’t do their homework ever but managed to pass my class anyway. I didn’t like using “participation points” for behavior management, even though it worked well. There must be something else, something better. I didn’t like it that the Honors class did not read twice as much as the regular class, that I did not push them like I could have.

There were things I did like: proposing Carol Dweck’s “Growth Mindset” at the beginning of the year, picking grammar concepts to focus on based on the Summer Reading essays and their following revisions, the quote board in the back of my room, the passing-in papers competition between the classes.

How could one ever get bored with teaching?

If I ever do, I hope I quit. Because if I’m bored or I think it’s easy, that means I’ve lost the love of it and I’m not serving my kids anymore.