Recorder Music!

I've ordered some recorder music to use with my kids at church and it has come in! It's just the spark I need to motivate me to do some planning. Unfortunately, I think I'll have to wait until Monday, as I need to get to Eastman to work on my project today and tomorrow I have a family party to go to. So..am praying that my motivation will stick around until Monday. :-)

Things That Just Brighten Up My Day

It's always fun when kids complement you on something, because they are so earnest in giving the complement. The other day I was sitting at my laptop in school and two girls walked in and were surprised to see me sitting at my desk with my hair pulled up. (Usually I just leave it down..like 99.9% of the time, but it's been getting awfully hot in my classroom lately.) They both immediately exclaimed how pretty I looked with my hair up.

Tuesday night was our parent's night at school and the next morning I found a note from a former student who is now in middle school. She wrote that she was doing both orchestra and chorus this year, and that she missed me a lot. It was very sweet. And as a friend said--a good thing to have hanging up for all of the times when kids decide that they are not going to continue playing.

Week #1

It is has been a long and hard week. There have been some really good points to it, but overall it has been discouraging. Year #6 of teaching has begun, and in some ways I am restless. When I graduated and first started teaching, I never saw myself lasting more than five years. Well, here I am--I love the work with the kids, but all of the peripheral junk that one has to deal with in the course of the teaching profession has left me discouraged. While this was only the first full week, it feels like it has been a month. For the first time since I started teaching, I find myself randomly having fleeting visions of other things I could be doing with my life. At this point in time, the thought of staying in the profession until I have to retire seems like a life sentence. It is truly my hope that the Lord will remove me at some point from the whole teaching thing. I need a break. But until then I must wait.

"But they that wait up the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31

Beginning of the Year

I think the beginning of the school year is probably crazy for every teacher, no matter what subject or grade level one teaches. Just a small example of what life is like: As I was driving home today I was thinking, "oh great, I'll have time tonight to go through my bag and get dates put into my calendar as well as weed through all of the catalogs I've gotten. Wait a minute, I have no food in the house."

So, the demands of basic, everyday life are calling my name and I music now go out to the grocery store if I want lunch tomorrow.