“You liberate me from my own noise and my own chaos, from
the chains of a lesser law you set me free”- Audrey Assad
Apologies for the extended absence,
life gets crazy sometimes. I’ve started life as a real life teacher and it
turns out that is pretty time consuming, especially your first year. I’m so
thankful for my GRACE community in all this chaos and I sincerely think we need
to have our own reality T.V. show just based on our dinner conversations when eleven
crazy teachers live together.
I’ve been assured it gets easier as you go, which
is logical and reassuring because I’ve realized that any new experience brings
out a lot of challenging questions and requires an amazing amount of energy.
Good thing my first graders love questions and energy, I’m still brainstorming
ways for them to transfer some of it to me around 1:00pm everyday.
As cliché as it may sound, teaching has already taught me more than I could have imagined.
Here is the short list:
-Patience is good, but understanding is better.
-Our teachers growing up didn’t know as much as we thought
they did
-A lot of my teaching is trial and error aka this has to get
better with time
-Teaching is probably the hardest thing you could do. Don’t
believe me? Lock yourself in a room with a bunch of six years olds for a day.
-Teachers are never finished
-This experience has made me more excited and paranoid to be
a parent one day (God willing and in the far, far, far long ways away future)
-Kids really do teach us how to love. They can be mad and
hurt and then two minutes later be best friends again. I pray for a heart like
that.
-Kids make me pray more. To keep my sanity yes, but also
because they teach you so clearly about the heart of God and I desperately hope
I am doing what I can to point them to Him.
I have every level and personality in my classroom and
little people have a way of teaching you about adults like no adult ever could.
Children haven’t learned to put up a mask or a filter like the rest of us have,
and that transparency is what makes them so beautiful….and hilarious.
Some think they are tigers, or birds. Some just have the
ability to use tiger and bird powers for super speed on the playground. All of
them could lift a car if you needed it. One is convinced I am an elf (and found
out I have a squishy nose which only confirmed this belief). Their creativity and imagination is amazing.
I’m doing what I can to maintain and encourage that. Often school is the place
where wonder is replaced by correctness, but making mistakes is how we discover
innovative ideas.
Random class updates:
We’ve planted beans on the window seal and excitedly watched
them grow in wonder (myself included). We made turtles out of leaves.
Addition
is coming together, both literally as we combine rubrics cubes and mentally. My
class loves singing more than life, so I’m searching for ways to incorporate
music into every subject. I am so thankful for donations. That’s what stocks
majority of my centers and the generosity of people is inspiring. I asked for
carpet squares and received enough for all the kids at our school!
This week we
are mailing our first letters to our Nun pen pals in Ecuador thanks to the
beautiful Arianna Olivares who is a missionary to these new friends of ours. http://arianainecuador.blogspot.com/
This post was as random and scattered as my life is right
now. But as the beautiful lyrics in the song, which inspired this post
proclaims, “here in the dark I do not ask to see, one step ahead enough for
me”. When my world is chaotic, stressful, and unsure I am confident that the
only security comes in finding the light. Some days is blaring, some days it’s
a sliver in the cracks, but it’s always there.
All My Love,
Carly Rose
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