Though I haven't spoken in awhile, I have had a few very brief moments to check some of your blogs. It is really comforting to know that I'm not the only one feeling like it is practically impossible to keep up with all of our life responsibilities. And listing things like laundry, dishes, grading papers, etc. just doesn't feel like it truly expresses the weight of the load.
One of my biggest stresses of the past month has been relieved. This school year, my schools population is really low. The largest class sizes in the school are only 22. I presently have 16 students. I just received #16 today; for the past two weeks I've had 15. Before that I had 17. So within the first 6wk of school of this year my class size has fluxuated more that any other year. (Yeah, I know, I really don't have that many years of teaching under my belt) The big stresser has been, that our overall student numbers are too low for our teacher numbers. A few weeks ago, my principal was telling a few of us that the district didn't over look our numbers and that something had to be done. (The district said that we had one too many teachers.) He said that they din't like any of the options but thought that we would be ok for this year, but next year, we would most likely have to go to only 2 teachers per grade level. (Right now we are at 3/grade) I thought, "woah, this is a little scary. For next year I'll be ok b/c one of the other 6th grade teachers is retiring after this year. So that automatically takes us down to 2, and I don't think that others with more years at my school are interested in 6th. (Not many teachers are) But for this year, I was getting worried. I'm not at the very bottom of the totem pole so I wouldn't be the one to go, meaning put in another available position somewhere else in the district. But with a grand total of about 50 6th graders, I was concerned that if we did have to get rid of a teacher, it would be 6th grade that they would turn into 2 classes and I'd have to take the opened position in the school. This conversation with my principal was right before my numbers fell from 17 to 15. So when my numbers dropped, I was getting really scared, thinking, "Was that it? Was that the final straw? Do we have to loose someone? Will I have to switch grades and leave my beloved 6th grade?" Then one day, after practically crying myself to sleep because of the stress, (and reassuring Semaj that I was not mad at him and that it was stress) I was talking to our assistant principal about other stuff, but then it turned into my worries about leaving 6th grade. She reassured me that I would be ok, b/c we’d have to loose like a class size (22) number of students, before anything would happen. She couldn’t say it with 100% accuracy, but really sure. It was enough for me. That load was lifted, and I was no longer worried about leaving 6th grade, which I love so much! That day I received another load lifting blessing. Our PTA president, who also works for our school and has in the past been an aide in my class – is a friend of mine, asked about if the student council was still going to give free tshirts to those on the council. I told her that I was sure since we decided to have a much larger council this year. She that proceeded to explain why she was asking, which to sum up was about if student council wanted the PTA to be in charge of the school tshirts this year. I told her considering the fact that the council doesn’t really do too much with the shirts, and that I am the one who does all the hard stuff, I would not mind at all if PTA took care of it. I was so excited to get that off of my plate, since it was on the side and starting to push very strongly to be in the center and to be taken care of in the correct and best time frame. I was very excited to go home and tell Semaj that we had received some blessings because our Heavenly Father cares about us and will help us carry our loads.
So since I was not squashed and flattened, I am alive, but still kicking hard to feel like I’m mostly staying afloat. Now since I’ve taken way to much time in writing this blog, I have to run away NOW to go show the mobile home (Semaj’s old house) to a potential buyer.
