Summer

I leave for DC with 15 8th graders in about 5 hours.

I kind of thought that this would be a bittersweet trip – a nice cap on yet another first-year-that-ended-up-being-the-last-year, because I received a layoff notice a few months ago.  But on Wednesday the LAST day of school, I received a letter from HR telling me that I had been recalled to teach at the same school. 

I was excited to say the least.  I will be in my same classroom, with the same grade, at the same school.  The only difference is the course-load I will be teaching.  I taught 8th grade Social Studies and Language Arts this year.  Next year will be those, plus Math and Science…..  oh, and Computer Applications. 

Basically I’m going to be running ragged, teaching and preparing for 5 different classes each day.  But I have a job, and that’s something.  It’s nice to know that this is a position that my Principal pretty much built for me.  There were other teachers at our school who had been laid off, but he went out of his way to make sure that I came back by making a position that only I could fill with my endorsements.  Honestly, that was way better than finding out that I had the job back – it was the best approval of my methods, and what I’ve done with my kids that I could have received.

So DC is now just a cap on a great school year – and something to tie me into next year.

As for the rest of it…

I don’t really know.  I guess I’m getting more comfortable being by myself.  The self-pity piece comes along less and less.  I don’t really feel like writing about it right now, mostly because I don’t quite have it worked out yet.