Bittersweet School Time

I am a mother of four boys. I am also a high school teacher. This will be the start of my second year teaching. I was a stay at home mom for 13 years. Best job in the world. I loved it, but alas, I need to work to cloth, feed, and soon send kids off to college. I do love teaching too. It is a ton of work, but I like working with teenagers and I love doing math.

Day 1 of this summer and ahhh, I remembered my old life. No schedules, free time, freedom, and spending time with the kids. I love going to the pool, the beach, and day trips. I also watch my niece and nephew during the summer. So, I have 6 kids during the summer. It is our own mini camp and I love doing it. But.....it is coming to an end.

I am done watching my niece and nephew. They start school tomorrow, so we have a week to ourselves. Well, not really. It is filled with the start of sports and getting ready for back to school.

The school clothes have been bought - both for kids and Teacher Mom. The shoes have been bought (again, for Teacher Mom too). The supplies have been bought. The school calendar has come and I colored coded all the events according to child. The old artwork has been removed from kitchen doors to make room for new, fresh artwork. I keep files for each kid. They have been cleaned out. The kids are ready.

I went into my classroom today. I don't have as much as an elementary teacher to get ready, but I do have a lot to do. I cleaned out my long closet it and organized all my geometry math tools and art supplies. I love that geometry is so hands-on, so I have a lot of material for it. I hung all my fun new, inspiring posters around the room. I filled my desk up with supplies.

Tomorrow I will go in and figure out my brand spanking new Dell computer, yeah! Better than our old dinosaurs we had last year. I need to bring the textbooks to the classrooms for the kiddos.

I have been working at home on things like class lists, policy lists, schedules, pretests, my name sign, and first day activities.

I need to fill in my lesson plan books and my class record books. Ahhh, then there is those silly things called lesson plans. Need to work on them.

Only one math teacher was in today, but it was nice to catch up with her. I really like all the math teachers I work with. They are great friends, so it will be good to see all of them.

So, it is bittersweet. I so love the summer, but the weather is getting cooler and telling me it is a change of season. Time to get ready to go back to work again. Get back to a scheduled existence - school and sports schedules. One boy is doing soccer, 2 are doing football, and one is doing cross country, add to that four CCD schedules, and boy, we will be busy.

I am excited that we don't start until after Labor Day this year. That is exciting. So, we will have one more last hurrah this weekend. My cousin is getting married in Vermont, so we rented a house with all my brothers and sisters and will go to the wedding. Then, back to business!