Time Flies!

I am very sorry for not making a new post for a while.  Life has been getting really busy here, especially now that it is getting close to the end of the school year.

                It’s hard to believe that I have been living in China for almost a year.  There are times that it seems like just yesterday that I received the news that I had been accepted, and that I had a job here…packing everything up into 3 suitcases…going to the airport and saying goodbye to everyone…and now I’m almost done with my first year of teaching.  Where has all of the time gone? 

                This past year has been a year of growth, and learning.  Learning more about myself as a person and a teacher…growing in my teaching abilities…growing closer to Dad…learning that I do know what I am doing…learning what it feels like when your boss commends you on what a good job you are doing in your classroom…growing in my confidence of abilities…and learning what has and has not worked so that I can make my classroom next year much better. 

                My students do something that amazes me every single day.  Whether it is speaking a sentence using their growing English vocabulary…remembering something we taught them to figure out something they’re not sure of…recalling information that was taught months ago and answering problems correctly…telling me, “Teacher, I know how to do it…” when I try to help them…and so much more shows me that they have been paying attention, and that what I have been doing has indeed made an impact on their young lives.  Yes, there are hard days…days when I would love to pull my hair out, or eat way too much ice cream because it has been stressful, hard, aggravating, full of mistakes (made by students and/or teacher), or a combination of all of these.  However, it’s through days like these that we grow.  If life were full of perfect days, we wouldn’t learn from our mistakes, and realize what does and doesn’t work.  Sometimes, these hard days can not only be beneficial for the teacher, but can also be used to help the students learn and realize their mistakes.  There have certainly been a fair share of those types of those days this year!  However, there have been more of the happy days, where students show how much they can learn and pay attention that make the hard days seem less and less awful.

                In these remaining 13 ½ days of school, there is a crazy amount of stuff that has to be done…we have Transition Day on the 24^th (when the Kindergarteners get to experience a bit of 1^st grade); Field Day on the 25^th; an open house on June 2^nd; Kindergarten graduation on June 6^th; last day of school June 7^th; report cards need to be finished and printed; need to still teach the kids so many different things; and who knows what else might come up?  I know that when I get stressed thinking about everything that still needs to be done…just focus on the happy moments of the school year, and keep shooting up arrows to Dad!  He surely is an Awesome Dad!!