I Needed a Nap

My student teacher has fully taken over my class schedule.  It's great.  I don't have to worry about photocopies.  Or PowerPoints.  Or grading lots of assignments (I'm grading most of the essays the kids had to hand in -- silly me).  I can pretend to get stuff done and imagine that that I can catch up on planning for the next quarter and grading those bigger projects the kids did.  I can sit in my classroom and just watch the kids.  Or I can go to my office and enjoy my morning coffee.  I can go to the bathroom whenever. I. want.  It's amazing.  I love it.  I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

And you know what?

I miss teaching.

I especially miss teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to my 9th graders.

Don't get me wrong.  My student teacher is doing a fantastic job with her lessons and relating to the kids.

But I miss talking about Scout and Jem meeting Dill for the first time.

I miss talking about the legend of Boo Radley.

I miss talking about Scout's first day of school and how she's not a fan of Miss Caroline or Walter Cunningham.

It makes me realize that, even though I have to take a lot of crap from kids on a daily basis (oh teenagers and their 'tudes...), I really do love my job anyway.  That's encouraging to me, because recently I've been feeling conflicted.  I feel my blood pressure rise on a daily basis because I'm tired of chasing kids out of the hall, and them giving me an attitude because I'm trying to get them back to class.  I'm tired of kids not caring about their education, and allowing themselves to fail.  Repeatedly.  I'm tired of society not holding the students accountable for their learning.  I'm tired of people complaining about the Common Core ruining our education system (God forbid we make education more rigorous).  I've just been... tired.

So me missing teaching makes feel better.  I'm not as tired as I thought.

But I can still wait a few weeks yet before I take things over again :-)