well blog, i have arrived.

today is the first official day of summer vacation. it is also the first day after my first and likely only year of teaching high school. i've decided to walk away--which makes me a statistic (see this article here) and a statistic is not something i like to be. but, after a lot of thought and sweat and flip flopping--i decided about a month ago to set down my teacher hat and look around at my options.

my reasons for walking away vary, but it narrows down to this-- i feel that there is something else better for me. not better in general, but just better for me. i want to clarify that because teachers are fantastic. i feel now more than ever that they have the hardest job in the world, and they still get up in the morning and smile and put on an elaborate juggling act for 8 hours a day (usually more). in the words of a fellow first year teacher: "this is a high stress scenario".

teachers put up with a lot of crap. a lot. period. double period.. they don't get paid enough. they have to wake up really early. sometimes they have to use the student's bathrooms. gross. but they keep on keeping on. i come from a family of teachers (my mom is a teacher, her sisters are teachers, her sisters' children are teachers, gramma was a teacher...) and they are the best. in my admissions letter to byu for the credential program i spoke to how much i had learned from my mom & her teaching (in and out of the classroom)--about how much i want to be like her. and all of that is still true, i'm not walking away from high school teaching because i hated everything about it and it's just too hard. i'm walking away because i feel like that is what is best for me. and if that makes me a statistic then that's okay.

so what's next? grad school. i love school--that feeling when you are on a university campus, going to office hours, reading on the lawn in front of the library. so my new direction is this: a university. in some capacity or another i want to be at a college. preferably teaching. see i told you i didn't hate everything about it :)

here are some pics from the last day of school:

yes, i dig the shins. and i will miss these kids.

ps last night i was planning my lessons for class today, going through my list of plans while i was trying to fall asleep. and then i remembered-i have no more lessons to plaaaaaan! so i woke up james and told him and we had a little dance party and i slept better than i have in 9 months.