Just Another Cottage in Blogville

Six years and an adult

Wow -- it has been nearly six years exactly since I last updated this blog. Much has changed. I worked a summer job that changed me as a person -- or at least revealed my true nature -- and changed the trajectory of my career. I graduated from college with honors, worked for a year as a grade school Spanish teacher, earned my Master of Arts in Teaching, taught for two years at a private high school, and now relocated across the state to teach my first year at a public high school. For years I've provided for myself and been an adult. Rather than being the desperate-to-please, confused, insecure, bratty, moody adolescent who bonded to her teachers as role models and stable adult figures, I am now a stable, relatively confident teacher who provides that to equally or more broken teens.

That's a brief summary of the last six years. It was far more tumultuous than that. I will confess here things that I would rather my students not know. Or administrators. Luckily this account can't be traced to anything with my real name. But we'll see. I won't write anything too incriminating. But you never know what offends people.

How... odd to stumble across entries that were written by me at the same age as the kiddos that I now teach. In fact, I am returning to blogging in order to cope with living in the countryside. I have relocated from the city to the most rural place I have ever lived. A week ago I lived in bustling suburbia, and now I live in a carriage house rented on a multi-generational family farm. It's gorgeous, and more details will come. Teaching is a stressful job; nearly everyone has gone through a school system at some point in their lives, so they assume they know what teachers do; but this isn't the case. Until you're the one in charge of lessons, grades, preparation, discipline, parental communication, pleasing administrators, etc., you simply can't know. This year I will be teaching five different English courses, including an AP course, as well as leading a restorative justice-type character-cultivating program.

It's a lot, but Jackie is an adult now. Around an hour ago, she cleanly broke up with a guy she thought she was going to marry. Even with grown up stress, life is far better than it's ever been.