Today is a mixed bag; there is less than a week to go before a new school year begins.
Part of the bag is filled with promise; a new year means new students, new courses and new beginnings. This is good because I am now renewed and refreshed to face all the excited faces who share my passion for visual arts. I have forgotten all the problems and issues that stayed behind my when I walked out of the school in June. I am excited with new ideas for the courses I am teaching and looking forward to what the year holds. I can't wait to get back into the classroom and face each new day as it comes.
Also in the bag is hesitation; a week left of summer vacation and a new year of drama, whining and self-entitlement...not all of which comes from the students. I am also a little hesitant this year because instead of teaching 3 courses first semester (as is the norm), I am teaching 5 (I have two split level courses - brilliant of my guidance department considering both combine the introduction and the experienced sections of the course). This is hard to balance and a lot of prep work for me. Right now my brain is still in summer mode. It takes more than just a switch that flicks to on to get my brain going into teacher-mode. I enjoy my summer vacation and although my husband is antsy with just a month of vacation, after having taught summer school, I could have another month of time just to complete my list of things-to-do and still be happy...until I look at my bank account.
I am then reminded that I am excited about going back in a week because it will mean I get paid! It's amazing to me that this one particular element of teachings-having-the-summer-off is often left out of the rant that I hear from non teachers about how nice it would be to have 2 months off. My usual retort is something along the lines of "you had the same opportunity to go into teaching that I had, I guess I chose wisely"...maybe the next time I get the thinly veiled jealousy I'm going to respond with something about having a 2 month vacation from my paycheck too.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Welcome!
I suppose introductions are in order...To begin with, I teach Visual Arts and History at the Secondary School level. I have been teaching for 9 years now. Within the school I teach at, this means that I'm one of the more senior teachers. We have veterans (teachers who have been teaching for 15+ years), but we are a mostly young staff. That means that the majority of teachers in our school have been teaching for about 6 years or less. That puts me in the middle of the road, in terms of experience, within my school. This gives you a bit of a picture of me, but it is not "me" in entirety.
I am newly married (we just celebrated our first anniversary) but have been friends for 10 years now, I am a new home owner, I love to cook, read and watch movies. I am passionate about photography and about art. I have long ago learned that my friends are my solace, and that counting husband among my best friends is one of the most important things in our relationship.
My husband and I have a lot in common, and many of our differences challenge the other to expand who they are. Among our commonalities, is the fact that he is also a teacher. In fact, he teaches Phys'ed in the same school that I teach...and no, we did not meet at the school. We met before we started working together.
There are usually two fixed responses when people discover that we work at the same school; people either think that "it's great" (getting to work together and see each other all day) or they wonder if it's "awkward". The thing that many people don't think about is that we usually don't see each other throughout our day. We're both in our respective classrooms, teaching, for our work day. When we decided to teach at the same school, we made a decision to keep it professional at work. This may make sense to most people, but to us this also means that we go through our day, for the most part, separately (we don't even eat lunch together, we eat with our friends/colleagues on staff). We wanted to keep distinct and unique identities for ourselves within the school among both the staff and students. We both felt that this was/is important as we want to be able to deal with students on an individual basis, not as each others' spouses. That doesn't mean that we keep our relationship a secret, everybody knew that we were dating and knows that now we're married.
This leads us to whether it is "awkward" to teach in the same school as my husband. It is not. I won't lie, it was at first. It was weird when students would approach me and know something about my personal life (that we were dating). It soon became something I got used to because that was where their information information and, for the most part, their questions...we were dating (or, as of last summer, we are married). That's the end of the conversation because that's where we have always chosen to end the conversation - professionalism in the workplace.
Is there anything else about me you should know? I'm sure there is, but that's enough for now. As I soak up the last couple weeks of summer vacation and my brain begins to turn once again to the classroom, I will leave you with a thought. In this blog want to relay something of what I have learned, and continue to learn from the students. My students are approaching the world from a point in life and from within a generation that we have labelled with terms like awkward, troublesome, lazy, apathetic, unengaged, and selfish. What were the adults saying about you and the teens of your generation?
It really all comes down to one word. It is the word that I use to advise my photography students on how to achieve better images. It is the word that can reflect change and can be the difference between a problem and a solution. It is the word upon which I base my blog.
Perspective
I am newly married (we just celebrated our first anniversary) but have been friends for 10 years now, I am a new home owner, I love to cook, read and watch movies. I am passionate about photography and about art. I have long ago learned that my friends are my solace, and that counting husband among my best friends is one of the most important things in our relationship.
My husband and I have a lot in common, and many of our differences challenge the other to expand who they are. Among our commonalities, is the fact that he is also a teacher. In fact, he teaches Phys'ed in the same school that I teach...and no, we did not meet at the school. We met before we started working together.
There are usually two fixed responses when people discover that we work at the same school; people either think that "it's great" (getting to work together and see each other all day) or they wonder if it's "awkward". The thing that many people don't think about is that we usually don't see each other throughout our day. We're both in our respective classrooms, teaching, for our work day. When we decided to teach at the same school, we made a decision to keep it professional at work. This may make sense to most people, but to us this also means that we go through our day, for the most part, separately (we don't even eat lunch together, we eat with our friends/colleagues on staff). We wanted to keep distinct and unique identities for ourselves within the school among both the staff and students. We both felt that this was/is important as we want to be able to deal with students on an individual basis, not as each others' spouses. That doesn't mean that we keep our relationship a secret, everybody knew that we were dating and knows that now we're married.
This leads us to whether it is "awkward" to teach in the same school as my husband. It is not. I won't lie, it was at first. It was weird when students would approach me and know something about my personal life (that we were dating). It soon became something I got used to because that was where their information information and, for the most part, their questions...we were dating (or, as of last summer, we are married). That's the end of the conversation because that's where we have always chosen to end the conversation - professionalism in the workplace.
Is there anything else about me you should know? I'm sure there is, but that's enough for now. As I soak up the last couple weeks of summer vacation and my brain begins to turn once again to the classroom, I will leave you with a thought. In this blog want to relay something of what I have learned, and continue to learn from the students. My students are approaching the world from a point in life and from within a generation that we have labelled with terms like awkward, troublesome, lazy, apathetic, unengaged, and selfish. What were the adults saying about you and the teens of your generation?
It really all comes down to one word. It is the word that I use to advise my photography students on how to achieve better images. It is the word that can reflect change and can be the difference between a problem and a solution. It is the word upon which I base my blog.
Perspective
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