Summer is HERE!!! Woohoo! Praise the Lord and hallelujah! 

…so what are you doing? Below are some ideas and some things that I have done to make the best of my summer, because they go by quick!

Option 1: Vedge

Sit around and do nothing! Literally. This was certainly my approach after my first year teaching! I felt like doing nothing and I did nothing. Not for the whole summer…but for the first month or so I have no shame in admitting that I was highly unproductive (which is unusual for me, I am the get it done and finish the to-do list kind of girl!)

Hope for the future

Teaching isn’t for everyone. There, I said it. It’s out there. This blog post isn’t going to try to convince you to pursue a career that will not fulfill your purpose and make you hate your life.

That being said, there is certainly something to be said for giving teaching another chance. Year one is often the tough both physically and emotionally (as it was for me), but I am very glad that I stuck it out and gave it another year.

There were certainly low spots in that first year of teaching. As I reflect back on that first year it is hard for me to remember the good times because they are so overshadowed by the bad. It always seems to happen that way.

For this blog post, I want to reflect on that first year as a whole and talk about a few things I wish I would have done differently.

If you have been reading my posts thus far, I hardly need to tell you that my first semester was no cake-walk...it was a bit more like running the gauntlet. Everywhere I turned I felt like I was being pushed down. 

So when Christmas break rolled around and people would ask how my first year on the job was going, I would answer with a solitary word: “Fine.” There must have been some kind of finality in my voice, because nobody ever asked for more information. 

My blog posts lately seem to be somewhat on the negative side lately… I thought I might lighten the mood a bit by describing some sparks of hope in that first semester that helped me remember the reason why I went into teaching in the first place.

Best Day of the First Semester of Teaching:

I remember a day just before Thanksgiving. Volleyball had just finished up (Did I mention that I also coached volleyball that first year? Busy busy!), so I had a moment to breathe before the end of semester. 

I have spoken about my graphic design and digital photography classes in previous posts, in this post I want to give you a full picture of what the rest of classes looked like in those first few weeks (because I taught MANY classes).

In my last post, I talked about my experience with graphic design in that first month of school. In this post, I will talk about how my digital photography class threw me for a loop.

Luckily, I actually did know how to take a quality picture, I had grown up doing photography for 4-H and knew a couple things about composition at least. However, I quickly learned that knowing how to take pictures didn’t mean that I knew the best way to teach someone to take pictures!

I already briefly went over my first day of school, but I wanted to talk about the first month or so some of the specific classes that I taught. I already briefly went over my first day of school, but I wanted to come back to it again and discuss some of the specific classes. Looking back on this has really shown me how much I have grown and learned in the past 7 years. It has really been an enlightening experience for me.

With nearly every class I taught, I would play the "what if" game.

As I entered the summer before my first year teaching, I was excited and I thought that I was prepared. My schedule was full; I would be teaching graphic design 1 and 2, digital photography, Art 1, 2, and 3, and yearbook. Writing it all out like that sounds overwhelming, but by the end of the summer, I had done some research and made some plans for the first month or two of class and I felt relatively confident.

I want to back up a little this semester and talk a bit about my first years of teaching to encourage those of you who might be in that situation currently and provide a little nostalgia for my veteran teachers!