What's Broken?

I spent more time- willingly- this summer doing school stuff than all previous summers combined.

I was so proud of myself.

New ideas, doing routine stuff ahead of time, and even blogging about it.

The first week we set up binders and notebooks and Google Classroom and Delta Math etc. Mostly the same routine from year to year.

The first few days went so crappy.

Not anything the students would notice. But I did stuff in a stupid order. Messed up both my printers. Left my hard drive at home. Forgot things until the last minute. Copied the same paper three times because the first time I accidentally hole punched it and the second time I did it upside down.

Even the third time cut the edges off.

I just felt...chaotic in my brain. I'm also not good at getting into a normal sleep pattern so my energy levels were crashing throughout the day. I spilled food on myself twice that week. Wore red lipstick but forgot to bring it with me so after lunch I was missing the inside lipstick with just a ring around the outside. lol

The day I felt fat and ugly and couldn't get my hair to do anything, three kids commented in Google Classroom that they liked my outfit, makeup, etc.

I got positive parent feedback and positive feedback from another colleague.

I gave hugs and fist bumps and high fives. I kept them engaged from bell to bell.

I tried new things. Got routine things done.

The moral of this post is that you can have 10 years of experience, prepare a whole summer, and still have things go wrong.

But your systems are still in place. The routines still work. You are still teaching.

And it will be okay.

We encourage mistakes in our learners for better learning, let's also encourage them in our teaching for better teaching.

When things go wrong or get chaotic, that is my newest idea for a system, form, structure change, etc.

The more things I fix, the smoother things go. But I can't fix things until I notice they're broken. So when mistakes happen, and they will (on a daily basis), add it to your list of things to improve.

You are okay.

And the mistakes will make you better.