Back to School...Already?!?

Sigh...those of you who have been following this blog for a while are probably tired of these posts. "Oh yay, here's Mara crying about having to leave Maelin while she goes back to work. She's lucky she gets so much time off at all, blah, blah."

I know, I know.

I'm determined to make this year different. Maelin is thriving in daycare, Kevin and I made a plan for him to help out around the house more this year, I've been working on some work things that might make the start of the year a bit easier and as long as the HEAT is turned off in my classroom (oh yes...it's 94 degrees out right now and on Friday, the heat was on in my room and no one knew when it would be turned off), I'm getting excited about the new school year!

Yes, I'm going to have more students this year than ever before. There aren't even enough desks in the building for all of them. Yes, we got rid of the bilingual program so lots of our kiddos aren't going to speak any English. Yes, our CSAP scores are wayyyyyyy down this year and that creates a lot of pressure for all of us to get our kids to proficiency. Yes, we aren't getting a raise this year due to budget cuts. Yes, we lost quite a few of our finest teachers last year to other districts, and yes, this is one of the hardest jobs anyone will ever do.

However...I'm optimistic. I've received personal emails from some of my students this summer asking how I'm doing, how is Maelin, they miss me, they can't wait to come back, etc. That wouldn't be happening if I wasn't touching them in some way...affecting their lives positively in some aspect.

As long as I can continue to do that (even on a small scale), and Maelin continues to love learning Spanish and loving playing in the dirt at Sandra's house...

We're ready to go back to school.

Gulp!