I made it to Christmas! As of Thursday at noon, I finished my first semester of teaching. I’m halfway through my first year, and a quarter of the way through my corps commitment. It’s weird, knowing that the hardest season of teaching is over.
My last week of teaching this term was less stressful than any other week, probably. We had testing on Monday and Wednesday mornings, then regular days of school for the rest of the week. Thursday, we had a half day and I only had seven students who came to school – it was possibly the most chill day of teaching I’ve ever had. We worked on phonics, then read a ReadWorks article about squirrels getting ready for winter, did GoNoodle, worked on some math, then had lunch and watched a movie.
I think that some different forces conspire to make the day before Christmas break the least stressful day ever, so that teachers don’t quit over break.
My loose plan for break was rest, then regroup.
I spent Friday in Jackson, taking care of errands and exploring a little beach with a friend, then left on Christmas Eve to go home to Michigan. I spent all day Christmas with my family, going to my aunt’s house for my dad’s family, and having dinner with my mom’s family at our house I haven’t done any work at all since being home – today was the first time I opened my Google Drive to look at a lesson plan and write a quiz. Thus, the rest phase of my break is over, and we’re onto the regroup phase – that means writing lesson plans and getting ahead, planning out new classroom management systems, that sort of thing. Right now, I’m working on the LP for the second week of school after the break. I have all these grandiose ideas that I’m going to get all my lesson plans for the term done – I think that getting everything planned out and organized in advance will make the term less stressful for me, which will make teaching and managing my classroom better and easier, in turn.