Day 47. 47 of 70 (72? I don't know how snow days work yet.) is finished. I am working my way there. I am well over halfway done...and I still feel like I have so far to go.
The kids are just driving me bananas lately. Today during free-choice centers I looked carefully at each one of them. I saw in every single one of them a child that I love, that has strengths and interests and sweetness (most of the time). I looked at each one of them and thought "How could this child ever do anything to upset me? They are so wonderful!" And then I looked at the group as a whole...and I almost lost my mind. I don't know what it is, but when these sweet, wonderful, beautiful children get together, they become a monster whose only goal is to make me lose my mind one piece at a time! They worked together so well -- so terribly well -- to become something absolutely insane.
The second day of my unit went better than the first. I made some last-minute changes to the lesson and I think it improved it a lot. I don't know if we are supposed to change what we have written on the lesson plan (I'm guessing not) but I just don't see why it would be better for us to do a lesson that we know is going to be chaotic -- like I realized my original plan would have been -- rather than do something we know is going to be better. I opted for the "do the better thing" option, and I hope that I didn't mess everything up by doing that. It makes sense to me, so that's how it's going.
I'm still feeling a little helpless and trapped right now. I am so desperate to be done student teaching, and yet I still have 23 (25?) days to go. I feel like I'm just going through the motions right now, which is NOT how I want things to be going right now. I want to be excited! I want to look forward to school! And I...don't.
Today I was sitting in the classroom during our break (the kids were at P.E.) and I found myself thinking "This is it. This is where I break down." I just cannot get it together. I feel like it's my first day again and I'm panicking because I have no idea what I want to do with my life or if I can even be a teacher without royally screwing it up. But it's not my first day...it's my FORTY-SEVENTH day and I still cannot shake this feeling. Spring Break really caused me to regress. It was probably the worst thing that could have happened this semester. I can't believe I was so looking forward to it. If I had only known what it was going to do to me...
How did I suddenly undo everything I've been working toward? My confidence is gone. My desire to get up and drive to school every day is gone. The feeling that I'm doing things right, that people are seeing the goodness (the greatness) in what I'm doing...is gone. I am 99% sure this is entirely in my head and I just need to snap out of it. But I'm also 1% really concerned that I somehow HAVE gotten worse over the last week. I say this a lot, but I really mean it this time:
CAN I HONESTLY LEARN TO TEACH?!?!
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