One of the things I like most about my job is that my school is small, incredibly small. There is only one teacher for each grade so everyone knows everyone. Kids have a hard time getting away with stuff. Plus you get to watch kids grow up. Parents and community members are very committed to supporting the school.
There are drawbacks to being in a small school though, and one of the biggest is that you don't have anyone to mentor you. There is no one else that teaches the same grade as you so you have no one to share ideas with and no one to compare yourself to (a blessing). Last year I found myself wondering if what I was doing was the norm.
So this year our principal has hired someone to mentor the new teachers in our building, me and my friend Rosie. This woman actually taught for more than fifteen years in my school and most of them in my classroom and she really knows her stuff.
So yesterday she took me to another school to observe what a K/1 classroom looks like. I spent most of the time saying to myself, "See, you're fine. You ARE doing the right thing." I took digital pictures of different things. But most of all I thanked God for the job that I have. I love it. I missed my students all day.
Actually, my brother drives school bus (along with being a youth pastor) for the district I was visiting. So when I saw the buses outside waiting for the students to board. I ran out to tease him.
"Hey Bus Driver Kyle I'm ready to go home."
(with a silly grin on his face) "You're such a dork."
I grew up with only brothers, no sisters, a fact that I love because being the only girl is "the bomb" as my students would say. You get to go on all the shopping trips, you don't have to compete for attention, you get your own room. Yet even now the sister relationship is a mystery to me. Brothers are pretty straightforward. If they think you're a dork, they tell you and you ignore them.
And hopefully you like the person they marry because that's pretty much the closest you will ever come to having a sister. But more on how much I love my sisters in law later.
I have to go home. I have a three day weekend.