Meant to be

In the last few years, especially since Pete's been alive, I've been thinking about whether or not I should be a teacher. I wonder if being a stay-at-home mom would be more suited to my current situation. It would allow me time to get the house cleaned, organized, and repaired in ways we haven't been able to do since we moved in when I was 7 months pregnant. It would allow me to volunteer in my daughter's kindergarten classroom, keep Pete home a little more to do baby-n-Mama classes and playdates, and workout more to drop the baby pounds. It would allow me to - GASP! - do more than one scrapbooked page per week. It would allow me to shrug off all the stress that comes with the school year, which affects my reading, my friendships, my energy level, my sleep, and my sex life.

But, when I took this job, I promised myself I'd give it a try for at least 5 years. God forbid I turn into a statistic.

One of my colleagues, Paul Kilkenney, once told me that it took 8 years for him to feel like he was getting the hang of teaching, and over 10 to really feel like it was not a constant struggle. He also said, which I remind myself of weekly, that all good teachers ask themselves if they should be teaching. No amount of confidence in our ability can cover up the fact that what we do in the classroom on any one day could positively or negatively affect a student's life forever. Ripples and waves.

...

The last few nights, I have not slept well. Part of that has to do with the heat in the house. (Why we bought a house with A/C when my husband won't let me turn it on, I don't know!) Part has to do with my terrible fear that something small will bite me on the foot if I leave my feet out from under the covers. (Don't ask - a completely strange story, not related to...) And part of it is that I've been sucked into the Twilight series, by Stephanie Meyer.

Heap on top of that that my daughter started kindergarten this week, and I couldn't go to her first day because it was my first day to. Oh, and a get-together with someone who seemed to really want to be my best friend, but who blew me off so many times that I decided she wasn't worth the effort. A challenge structure at my favorite digi scrapping site that very few people are taking part in. And the lack of usual support staff at my school because of the Governator's 10% across the board cut backs state-wide.

Needless to say, the pissiness crept up on my yesterday afternoon. It was unleashed when the YMCA person at my daughter's after care program asked for my ID to pick her up. That's okay, but that's the first thing she said to me. No, "Hello, welcome to the YMCA after-care building. I'm so-n-so. Are you Claire's mom? Nice to meet you!" or anything like that. Just, "If you're picking up Claire, I'll need to see your ID." Obviously, Claire will not be learning social skills from this woman.

Then, the dinner with the former friend-to-be who kept trying to get personal with me, and I tried very hard not to say anything painful to her to spread the misery.

Then, on the way home from being out late with the playdate families, I tried to call my husband on his cell twice to ask him to start a bath and make a bottle, since the kids were both up late past their bedtimes. But, he's already gotten home, taken off his jeans (with the cell phone on vibrate in the pocket), put on his pajama pants (with no cell phone in the pocket), and gone to play Rock Band or watch TV or something.

Then, I fell asleep while trying to post to my digi site about the challenges and what to do about it, so I dragged myself to bed, only to be hot and uncomfortable and wide awake! So, I stayed up reading, went to bed around 11, was woken just as a I was drifting off to sleep by the baby, and then couldn't fall asleep again for a while.

This morning, I woke up late, Claire was getting sassy with me every time I asked her to do something for me, we're out of a ton of groceries but I have yet to shop so lunches were sucky, we left late, Joe decided to take a "short cut" to his train stop which wasn't short, and then I got to school only a few minutes late for my prep. EXCEPT, when I went to my trunk to get my bags, they weren't there.... they were back at home. So I drove all the way home to get them, and got back in enough time to discover that I couldn't login to the Read 180 software to set up my students for their tests today.

I warned my 3rd period students that I was pissy. Their eyes got big.

But once I started talking to them about word parts (auto-bio-graph-y) and brainstorming and writing and such, my bad mood lifted. Quickly. I almost felt it fly out of me, like in Ghost.

...

This is a long way of saying that I think I was meant to be a teacher in this environment. Don't get me wrong, a year or two off to deal with all the stuff above would be nice. And I'm not perfect by any means. But there are very few activities that I do that change my mood so well and so fast. Golly, I hope I remember that.