curiousillusion

I can’t put my finger on what happened, or when it happened, but something is different lately. Actually, there’s been quite a few subtle changes lately. It’s kind of.. exciting.

Let’s start with the most obvious to me… I’m feeling a bit more relaxed, I guess you could say. There’s an old saying that goes “teachers shouldn’t smile until Christmas”. While it’s not something people really follow (um, I don’t think they do anyway), the theory is that you kind of need to be in tough, strict teacher mode for a while, so that the kids learn the rules and know that you mean business (which means they’ll actually follow the rules)… once they get into the swing of things (ie, around Christmas), then the teacher can relax a bit more and not need to be so strict.

Now while I’m not like an actual believer in that (obviously my kids see me smile), I do think that I was kind of strict with them the first few months of school, trying to establish routines and so on. But lately it feels like I’ve been able to relax a bit more… and, as a result, we have been having quite a bit of fun. Still doing our work but all of us are being silly, laughing, having fun learning… I love that.

And that’s the other thing – after last year’s experience teaching kinder, I kind of figured that I wasn’t meant to be a kindergarten teacher. It’s a hard grade level to teach, the kids are very young and not independent at all. But this year I kind of love it… for lots of reasons that would require their own blog post. I’m not sure if it’s this group of kids or just because it’s my second year doing it… but I kind of think I *would* like to teach kindergarten again next year.

Also, you may remember that one of my new year’s resolutions was to find a new job for next year, mainly for monetary reasons (this job does not pay well at all, even by teaching standards). It’s interesting… every year that I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been stuck at schools I didn’t like and never wanted to stay longer than a year. But this school, this school that I didn’t like at the beginning of the year, is growing on me. While I’m not as close to the teachers here as I was with with the teachers at my last school… I *am* starting to like it here. People are starting to ask if I plan on staying here next year and I think to myself, “yeah, I kind of *would* like to stay here next year.” My big thing is that I don’t really know if I can afford it… and I *really* don’t want to live another year with my parents.

Like I said, a lot of little changes. Good changes. I kinda dig it. We’ll see what the rest of the school year brings tho… hopefully more good. :o)

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