Wow, way to go me... all the way since October since I've written here.
I have been so much happier with this year than I was with last year. I mean, there were a lot of great things that happened in my life last year - I got my first real job, we bought a house, we bought a puppy... but last year was also STRESSFUL. I'm loving being a second year teacher SO much more than I liked being a first year teacher. Not to mention, I enjoy the CLASSES I teach this year so much more. Again, though, I have the same feeling I had last year with the "If I could only go back and redo this unit then I could teach it so much BETTER!" I wonder if that is something that will happen every year, or if it's something that will go away with time as I improve my teaching. I guess, though, that the idea of being a good teacher is that you're constantly improving, so it's probably good if I still have that feeling ten or twenty years down the line.
There are a lot of things I HAVE been doing better at this year. I've been way better at planning ahead instead of just taking a day at a time, at having a view of the entire unit. I've also been better at keeping up with grading, although it still seems overwhelming.
I am looking forward to this summer, to finally getting to the point where I can catch up on everything I've been putting off all school year! That's what I think a lot of non-teachers don't get about teaching...they say "Oh, you have summers off" - but they don't realize how much of our lives we put off during the school year, so that once the summer comes there's a crazy long list of all these things we DIDN'T have time to do until then! I would say we probably have around the same amount of free time as most professions, just ours is practically non-existent during the school year and a bit more concentrated in the summer and over breaks.
Anyway... I WILL try to update this more frequently than every seven months or so. We'll see how that goes.
