One of the teachers at school is not coming back next year because she is going to stay home with her new baby due in July.  My mother was a stay-at-home mom when I was younger.  She eventually worked in the school system so that she could be at home with me after school.  I know now that it wasn't easy financially for my parents to do this, but I feel so lucky that they did!

I went for my interview for graduate school admissions.  I am looking forward to school in some ways, but thinking about the time and money doesn't make it seems so great.  However, it is the only way to advance in this profession.  Now, I have to wait to hear from both schools.  Hopefully I will know something by next week!  They are both important, but one is extremely important.  It's in the Lord's hands now!

So tomorrow I go back to work after having nine days off.  People often says that teachers really shouldn't complain about their pay because they get so many holidays.  I don't know how to tell them that we need those breaks because we are utterly at our wits end.  The kids are crazy and by this time of year, the parents are over it too.  Then, it's testing time.

For example, we already take work home with us or stay extra hours at work but this week, we have book studies.  So not only did we have to work at home on the book study, but now we are required to stay after school and present/listen.  Plus we have to meet for three hours to plan for tutoring that some us are even doing.  And, that means we aren't teaching...but we'll get the blame on the state test when scores aren't what they could/should be. Most of us work 10-12 hour days which is nothing exceptional, a lot of people do that or more. We however, never get to leave once we are at work.  We are with the kids...even at lunch.  Our planning time, which people consider our break, can be taken away from us without warning for meetings or parent conferences.  That means the work we could have been doing now goes home with us.  I wish that all the crap would just go away and we could teach.  I don't mind the planning...that's when you find those thought provoking, challenging and fun activities for the kids to do and learn from.  I talking about the meetings for no real reason except a paper trail or to impress others, paperwork that is a joke and probably filed somewhere, and not getting support from parents and others!

Okay....vented enough!  I must say that I love to teach, and enjoy being a teacher. I just wish!

He is Lord!  He is Risen, and He is Lord!

I know that I work better at night, and I should have never wasted my day contemplating this portfolio for graduate school.  But I did it anyway.  Even tonight when I was trying to write, it was so difficult.  I know how I feel about education and about students and the learning process.  It's just that now after twelve years of experience, I also know that there are variables that can takethis grandiose philosophy of mine and bury with many other idealistic opinions that I have.  These variables that I am talking about aren't imposed by me, but by those that control what I do.  They make the day to day aspect of the job harder than it ever should be.  Why do you think that our state has a teacher shortage?  Teachers are leaving the profession before completing even one year.  The children are the ones that suffer from this outcome.  Truly, there are talented educators that bring learning alive for children. Yet they are being stifled by system that doesn't hold everyone accountable to the same requirements, objectives or goals.  It is also those educators that are blamed more than others for any failure and given extra work because they are so efficient and capable.  So my philosophy of education, that I can't really state, is that we are in grave danger of handicapping our children forever and denying educators the ability to teach without fear and with dignity.