For me and I'm sure many others, this is a season of change. There's a old saying, "Work hard, play hard." I never really knew what that meant until this summer. For the last 17 years, I've been teaching during the school year AND summer months (except 1 summer to be Mommy to my middle one who made her entrance in late May). However, this summer, after doing this for so long, and adding college work for the last couple of years, my husband insisted that I not teach summer school. I didn't apply, didn't worry about it, but somehow still got roped into 12 days of Kindergarten SS, which I wrote about in some earlier posts.
I really enjoyed having so many days to do N-O-T-H-I-N-G! No schedules, no assignments or projects due, no one except my family needing me and even some days when they didn't need me, made for a wonderful summer! My time belonged to me and I got to pick what was worth my time. I read books for fun (not because I had to), learned a T-O-N about Google, played with Canva, along with sleeping in many days! We found a list of top 10 watering holes in TX and started visiting. Made our way to Barton Springs in Austin, and Blue Hole in Wimberly, TX this summer, along with our annual trip to Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels, TX!
I finally discovered with the "play hard" part of that old saying meant. Working hard is just second nature. That comes from the legacy passed down from my Mom that I wrote about earlier. We all need a season of resting, playing, having fun. For me, that begins and ends with my family!
Additionally, I have entered this new role that my Principal calls the 3 T's. This year I am serving my campus as Testing Coordinator, Title I, and Technology Teacher. Technology is my personal passion (and there's a story there for another time). Title I is something I've done for 4 years now, but never budgets, and Testing Coordinator is only just something I would say I dabbled in over the last 4 years. Each role carries an element of nervousness because I'm dealing with kids and their individual needs, which STAAR, TELPAS, etc relies on and I have to get right from the get go, so it's routine for them, and dealing with budgets, which anytime I'm dealing with someone else's finances, I get very OCD and nervous about because I don't want to royally mess it up. This new role is a "Never Been Done Before" role. Folks at my campus ask me how I like it, and I don't really have a response yet, but I plan to enjoy all that comes with it, learn from it, and make the most of the opportunities I've been afforded. My former Principal told me that if you aren't a little nervous, then you won't be great in your role, because it's in that nervousness that you pay attention to details, invest more to the role, etc and I have to say she's dead on with this.
Personally, my season of change came in my own family. My oldest began dual credit classes for college and high school this summer, and today I enrolled our youngest in Kindergarten at my school. We will have one in elementary, one in junior high, and one in high school this year. It's a season of shuffling schedules, kids, and everything that comes along with new school years, new teachers, new starts.
My advice for anyone going through lots of change right now, would be to dive in, embrace the change! It may not be your cup of tea, your favorite anything, but I guarantee you'll learn something from it and you might just be happily surprised by the outcomes and results.
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