Four Years of Blessings

In August, I took on a new teaching position…and I’m not going to lie, I was absolutely terrified.

My first three years of teaching were in the high school and school district where I grew up.  I was completely comfortable with the faculty (because most of them taught me), I knew the environment and all the rules, and I went to church with many of my students.  But, I wanted a change.  So…when the opportunity became available at the district in the town where I live, I went for it.  Sure it was a different grade level, a different district, a different environment, but I didn’t really think about any of that until my first day of professional development on August 10th…and boy, did it hit me that morning.  I completely panicked.  I even went to the storage closet in my room at one point and pretended like I was looking for something so no one would walk in and see my crying.  (That plan didn’t work out.  One of the resource officers walked in to say hello, and I’m pretty sure he was just being nice by pretending he didn’t see my freak-out moment.  I’ve always appreciated that out of him…thanks Hogan!)

By that point, I had spent the whole summer worrying about making friends with my co-workers and learning the new curriculum and wondering if I had made the right decision, and it just hit me hard all at once.

But…

We’ve made it to our last Friday of the school year…only four school days left…and I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that I did make the right decision.  After fixing my makeup and putting on a smile, I dove into those PD sessions that day.  Made new friends with my co-workers.  Learned the new curriculum.  Developed a love for a new district and new grade level and new students.  And you know what?  I still talk to my former co-worker friends regularly.  I still love The Crucible and William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily and the Robert Frost poetry from my old curriculum.  I still keep up with my former students.  The things that I thought I was “losing” or “gaining” turned out to just stay with me all along!

It has been a wild year with many unexpected twists and turns, but never once have I questioned whether I made the right choice.  As I look through pictures from my class performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from yesterday and today, I see so many wonderful, smiling faces from my classes this year, and they make me think of so many wonderful, smiling faces from the other three years that I taught before.  There have already been almost a thousand of those kiddos.  Crazy, right?  That’s a thousand different people who hold a little piece of my heart.  Before I began this career, I never really knew that my heart could hold that much…but it surely does!

I don’t know where my next twenty-four years in education will take me, but for now, I am just so happy that God led me where He did.  Not just to the district I’m in now (although that is a big blessing), but that He led me to this career.  This year has been a pile of crazy-funny-frustrating-awesome, just as the first three were.  Even though I want to pull my hair out at times and my students occasionally make me crazy, I know God has put me where I need to be.  What a wonderful feeling that is.