Last weekend before school!!!

This is the last weekend before school starts. From now until the end of May all other weekends will just be a weekend and there will be work on Friday as well as Monday. The last weekend before school starts always makes me a little sad. Fun time is over and it's time to get serious again. No more making plans with friends at 11:00 on a Tuesday morning, or laying in the pool the whole afternoon, or staying up until 2 am watching movies with the kids.

I am excited about starting the school year. Seeing old familiar faces again, meeting new people, etc. But that lasts for about 2 weeks. Then things seem normal again.

I am lucky because I love my job. I honestly can not imagine doing anything else for a career other than teaching Spanish. I love the language and I love teaching kids. Period. I get some perks, like hopefully the trip to Spain that I'm planning for next summer will happen. I get weekends off for sure, most holidays and a good summer break. Most jobs can not provide that. I love the look on my students' faces when they are having fun learning, or that "aha!" moment when the light bulb turns on in their heads. I love when they do something thoughtful, like the students that made t-shirts in my classes last year, or signed a class picture frame, or wrote out sweet cards. I love the fact that a few of them made a blanket for my Mom when she had cancer. I love it when they tell me they wish I was their Mom when I'm telling stories about my kids and the fun things we do. I need to remember all of these things all of the time, because I am really lucky but sometimes I get bogged down by the pain -in- the -butt stuff about teaching.

This school year I am hopefully going to be a lot less stressed -that's for sure. First of all, I am finished with my Master's degree, so I won't have to come home from working and do homework! Second, I don't have a new prep this year, so I am familiar with what I am going to teach and won't have to constantly be making new things up. I just need to improve on what I did last year. Third, I think I have a student teacher this year, so that will hopefully lighten the load (as long as he's good....if he's bad it will make things worse!).

So, cheers to the 2008-2009 school year! I hope it's a good one!