Back to Work

I've known since October that I would be doing a second long-term sub position this year at the same school as fall. This is absolutely ideal for a substitute. I get to fake some sense of a normal school year because 6 out of the 9 months I'm in one place, working with one department, with one set of admin and one bell schedule. It's almost like having a real job just without the real salary or real benefits.

So, knowing that her due date was coming up in a couple weeks, the teacher I'm covering and I started talking about stuff in a general way around Tuesday. We planned to meet for the first time on Friday. But babies have a funny way of not caring about your plans at all. Wednesday night I got a panicked phone call. From the hospital. Her water broke. She was having her baby. 3 weeks early. And I had to start immediately.

Okay. Sure. I can totally do this.

I left on Thursday with some bare bones lesson plans for the next two days and butterflies in my stomach like the first day of school. The thing is, I'm not a student teacher anymore. I'm a classroom teacher because it's who I am as a person. So I got there and realized "What the crazy was I worried about? This is natural! This is what I'm meant to be doing!" And it's true.

So far things are going well. I love - LOVELOVELOVE - my kids. 10 honors and 11 college prep English. It's like teaching on a different planet from the 9th graders I had in fall. I'm in heaven. Or really, just exactly where I'm supposed to be. Instead of having to adjust from the 3 months I've basically had to sleep in and do whatever I wanted all day, I just feel like that's been a weird waiting period so I could get back to my regular life. Teaching is my real life.

The lack of prep time means at least this first few weeks I'll be playing catch up and may never get more than a day or two ahead of the kids in the books, buy hey, that's how I spent most of last year too. It's not like I can't figure it out. And I'm just so flipping EXCITED!