The ride of a first year teacher

Maybe I wouldn't be considered a "first year" teacher, but this is my first whole year, with students that came into sixth grade with me and will leave sixth grade with me.  It was liberating to be able to set up my classroom how I wanted it, both the physical space and laying out my classroom expectations.  Being a firsty, I get a mentor, who also works in the school, to guide me through the ups and downs of teaching :)  She presented me with this graph:

As you can see, I've labeled where I'm at right now.  "Disillusionment; "a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be." isn't exactly how I would describe myself right now.    

I wouldn't say that I'm disappointed at all, I'm still quite happy :)  My students are awesome, my coworkers are awesome and the spirit squad I co-coach (both cheer and dance team) are awesomesauce.  Honestly, I couldn't imagine a better situation.  I would describe myself now as perhaps lazy, uninspired, sluggish... and I don't blame this on the fact that I'm a first year teacher, but rather the weather.  I'm only hoping that the rest of this year will follow the path of this graph, as in, going nothing but up.

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What I'm reading


I just finished reading this book, the follow up to Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight.  It's been filling in more and more details about Rhodesian Civil war--something I hadn't heard of until I had stumbled over Fuller's first book.  It makes me long for Africa; the Africa I know today, and also this strange Africa that Fuller describes to be quaint and colonial.  I know it's awful to think of what was regarded by the rest of the world as apartheid to be "quaint," but if this other version of Africa could have existed without the racial separation and marginalization, it would have been just that.

I just started this today, but it sucked me into the same world of dust, sweltering afternoons, frangipangi, tea,  msasa trees, the cacophony of  African life and again, the backdrop of the Rhodesian war (told by a woman who was at the time a young child).  It's interesting trying to decipher what really happened based on the retelling by little girl.  Being knee-deep in this story, and having read both of Fuller's books, I feel so familiar with Zimbabwe, it's as if it was my childhood as well.  I can only hope to write something this addictive, so as to make my readers wish they had such a rich, rural Wisconsin upbringing.











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Books I couldn't help myself from buying at B&N: