I hate ironing! ... and a breakthrough.

I have been ironing for the past 30 minutes, only it feels like I have been doing it all day. I swear, if I never had to iron another piece of clothing or take out another bag of trash, my life would be complete.

In completely unrelated news, progress reports are going out tomorrow. This means that I spent all day Saturday grading papers. It could have been worse, of course, but I'm certainly ready to get my evenings and weekends back. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing this happen anywhere in my near future. These teaching/coaching hours are NO JOKE!

Again, I would seriously be in trouble right now if I did not have Alex, my family, and a few really awesome friends supporting me and keeping my head above water. I've also made a few terrific friends at school. My "team" is absolutely amazing, as are a couple of other girls (teachers, that is ... not students) who relate to the stress and provide that "I'm right there with you" comfort.

I'm really enjoying teaching, though there are many (many, many, many) challenges that come with the job I have accepted. Not only is this year a huge transition in curriculum, but there is also the challenge of finding a way to fix something that has been mostly broken in the past years. I chose this profession to help kids, to give them a form of support and stability that a lot of them do not have otherwise ... and I feel that I am accomplishing that goal so far ... but, man, it is not easy.

Then again, that is yet another reason that I have always known teaching was what I should do: it's not easy! I don't want a career that I could do in my sleep, I don't want a career that is minimal interaction and little impact. I want a career that keeps me on my toes. Teaching does that and so much more!

I did almost cry in class the other day. We were talking about "reading" in terms of how we read literature versus how we read advertisements versus how we read people, and so on. (Basically, we read everything the same ... it's all about perception.) The kids were a little confused when I asked how you read people, so I had to explain a little bit.

First, I asked the first thing they notice about a person when they meet them. Answer: appearance (of course!). I asked what you can learn from someone by simply taking in their appearance. A lot of discussion and responses followed, mostly about how much money a person has (clothing brands and jewelry), if that person takes pride in themselves (are they put together and not sloppy), how old that person is (roughly), what race and sex that are (sometimes ambiguous, but mainly easily recognizable) ... things like that.

What I really wanted them to focus on were the deeper "things" they could read, not just superficial things such as appearance. To lead the discussion in that direction, I then asked what you can tell about a person once they begin speaking. I asked if you can tell if someone is genuine or fake, kind or rude, intelligent or uneducated, etc. One of my volleyball girls (who is in one of my Pre-AP classes) answered that you can definitely tell all of those things about a person very quickly. I asked her to elaborate.

She said that she could tell I was a really nice, genuine, and caring person within the first couple of minutes of meeting me. Also, that I would be a great teacher and coach. I asked how and she went on to list all of these amazing things that she thinks of me to the whole class. The whole class then joined in and starting listing all of the things they "read" about me during our first meeting ... and every, single one of them was wonderful.

It was EVERYTHING I could do to not burst into tears. I guess you never know how much you actually reach these kids until it's blatantly thrown in your face. I had no idea until that moment, and it is those moments that make the time and the stress and the emotion completely worth it.

I'm tearing up a little right now just thinking about that day. That's one of those that will stay with me for the rest of my life, I'm pretty sure.