...and then lunch

I discovered a park near my school where I can eat lunch and regroup for the afternoon. It was delightful.

Then and Now

 My desk is definitely more covered in papers all the time now that I'm an administrator, even though I try to clear it off each day before I leave for the day.

Desk in my classroom last year - enjoy the bright green wall!

Desk in my office this fall - looking only mildly disastrous and depersonalized.

Real

I spent most of yesterday moving my office to the front of the school, so that I can be more accessible to students. I also finally managed to organize the many stacks of paper that were starting to become ridiculous. My transition from teacher to college counselor is finally starting to feel more real.

Hurray!

We've been praying that Benjamin get a history teaching position before the end of the year. Here we are celebrating that happening last week! He is now teaching seventh, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade history. I know that God is always faithful, and he has truly showed his goodness to us over this time of transitioning to Texas in the last year. It's easier to see his goodness when he's answering prayer the way that we'd hoped, but I don't want to forget his faithfulness to us when things were not going the way that we wanted, at the speed that we wanted.

Catching Fire

Yesterday's lack of post was due to my irresponsibly and addictively reading the last two books in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy - Catching Fire and Mockingjay. My eighth graders are going to be reading the first book in the series next week, and I thought that as a responsible teacher, I should probably take a look at the other two books in the trilogy, in order to respond intelligently if the kids decided to read the rest of the books and talk to me about them. I downloaded them on my Kindle at 3:30 pm on Sunday afternoon. At 11:30 pm, I blearily looked up from the last page of Mockingjay and went immediately to bed, since it was hours past my bedtime. It's a pretty intense trilogy!

Coping

This is how I've spent my weekend coping with the germs my students so generously gave me this week. Lots of tea and sleep. Thank goodness I'm almost back to healthy now that the new week is starting!

To and fro...

The view on the way to and from work today. The morning and afternoon commute are quite different, almost like night and day (oh, wait a minute...)

Goodbye

(Riffa Fort, Bahrain)

...to student teaching.

Gypped!

(4th grade MKS students during a basketball tournament)

This picture quite handily sums up my feelings about the anticipated snow day that failed to materialize yesterday.

Endings and beginnings

Yesterday was my last teaching day with the three periods I took over for student teaching, although I will still be at the school for another two weeks, observing and grading. The kids were incredible and asked if I would be coming back to sub for them.

I'm really glad that I don't actually have to say goodbye yet! I'm terrible at goodbyes. I'd much rather just disappear one day.

I am excited to be getting closer to whatever it is Ben and I will be doing when I am done with school, though!

There will be order!

(German market display)

Sometimes you just have to leave it to the Germans to be properly organized... I am definitely needing to channel some of my Germanness (Germanhood? Germanity?) to finish my work sample and final paper for class. My last day of actual teaching is tomorrow. Then I'll just have two weeks of observation and grading left... Crazy!

I remember why...

...I want to be a teacher. Right now the paperwork part of teaching seems excessive. And then I remember my students in Bahrain and how wonderful it can be. Just think, next year, mostly likely, I'll have my own classroom again!