a glimpse of teacher life

(via)

As I was driving home from school tonight, a song started playing on my phone. It was "The World You Want" by Switchfoot and it kept me thinking and wondering the rest of the drive home.

"Is this the world you want? Is this the world you want? You're making it everyday you're alive." 

I started wondering about my life (and I don't think I'll ever get to a point when I'll stop wondering), but I think the choices I make everyday are mostly pointing to the type of person I want to be and making up the world I want to live in.

I started my first days of teacher training this week. Well, the graduate courses for my Masters before official teacher training in August. I go to school twice a week for 10 hours each day and I feel like my brain is going to explode. It's only been Day 2 and I'm already trying to figure out how I'm supposed to do formative assessment throughout my day while making mental portfolios of each kid in my head while making sure it's not utter chaos in the classroom while thinking about fifteen other things. We've been learning about how policies affect teacher life and how to use instructional design and implement technology and I just keep thinking, "What did I just get myself into?"

It's hard. It's so hard you guys.

And it puts me outside of my comfort zone all the time.

And all the things we discuss in class scare me.

And in my head I know my classmates are my cohort and my support group, but sometimes I can't help thinking these are the girls I'm going to compete with to find jobs and they're all so pretty, and so smart, and [insert fabulous adjective].

But I love it.

At the end of the day, all the many hours I spend in class and the late nights I spend reading countless 30+ page articles are worth it.

And guess what?! I have friends! I've met some great girls and today we had lunch together and sat at the same table in class. (It wasn't an easy start. I almost sat by myself during lunch break on Tuesday and wanted to cry. Then I approached some girls and now we're great friends, or at least whatever you call friends you've only met twice.)

Sometimes when I'm in class and the topics we discuss get heavy, and we realize teaching isn't all rainbows and flowers, I keep thinking about the comments I've gotten from other people.

"Ohhh, you'll get every summer off!" "Teaching will be easy once you get into it. As long as you make your lesson plans for the first year, you just keep re-using the same thing!" The list goes on.

Well, friends, I won't know for sure what teaching is really like until this school year, but all I can say right now is that it's hard. Yes, I get summers off, but half of those summers are planning for the next year. And no, once I have material for my first year, I can't just reuse everything again the next year. Every year is different with a new group of kids, every week is different within those years, and every day something new will happen that will make me ditch or alter a lesson plan I was going to use for the next day.

But I'm ready for all of this (and more) in the years to come. I'm excited and nervous and sometimes judgmental, but mostly just excited. Here's to five more weeks of craziness and endless group projects and research articles and becoming the greatest of friends with my future teachers.