Things I Should Have Been Doing All Along....

When I first started teaching, one of my mentors gave me a lot of advice. Most of it I took and held as gospel because she had been teaching urban youth for 5 years, which is practically retirement age for most teachers who start out in the Urban Core. She taught me all about how to break up a fight, how to stand my ground with crazy parents, how to make certain that the security guard and vice-principals like you and want to help you with nutty kids and how to make 1 box of copy paper last all year when you have 110 students. Of all of the things she taught me, the one thing that I did not listen to and looking back I really should have was keeping a journal. She told me to write down all the funny stuff, the sad stuff, the crazy stuff and everything in between. Unfortunately, 5 years later, I don't have the journal and occasionally I find myself really wishing I could look back and see how far I have come. I know that I am a totally different teacher today than I thought I would be 5 years ago, I think I always expected that to happen. What I did not see coming was how much I would change in 5 short years. I know that I am no where near done growing, (hopefully) I have a lot of life left to take on but moving forward I want to use this blog as the journal that I should have started years ago. I want to share more than just stuff about teaching because if there is one thing that I have learned it is that who I am in the classroom is a direct result of who I am out of it. So this blog will be my attempt to make sense of (and keep track of) life. Life as a wife, a daughter, a dog mom, a sister, a friend, a teacher, a mentor and everything else in between....and if any one cares to read it, well than I guess that is just icing on the cake!