I am four weeks into my new and improved life as a 4th grade teacher at Kammann Elementary! I find myself significantly overwhelmed the majority of the time, but I have yet to have a panic attack in our staff lounge so all is good in my eyes. I look at it as though I'd be doing something wrong if I wasn't overwhelmed as a first year new teacher...
Since my return from Tanzania almost two months ago, my professional working life has made a complete 180 degree turn for the better! Coming home after two months volunteer teaching in Tanzania and learning more than I taught, I found myself in a whirl wind of conflicting feelings. I was a newly, re-inspired educator coming back to the states where the job market for education was a bleak one if not nonexistant. I was stressed financially (I didn't make one cent in Africa but was spending...), exhausted from the journey home, and yearning for some sort of closure from my trip...all while having to look towards the future and find myself a real teaching job that pays the bills and affords benefits.
How did I handle this, you ask?
Well, luckily for me, my mother raised me to tackle life's problems head-on in order to overcome its adversity and move on to the good. This advice got me my job this year. Without the strength, as well as the endless supply of support and positive thoughts from family and friends the past couple months, I would not have these stills of my very own classroom to share with you.
With that said, here are some stills. Enjoy!
[in our 4th grade hallway student shields surround the spiffy 3D class tree I made]
[view when your first enter]
[view of the front of the room]
[my desk. the orchid was a gift from one of my students :)]
[writing wall showcasing Haiku poems our class created the first week of school]
[construction paper self portraits to go along with their I AM poems for Back to School Night]
[view from my desk]
