Honesty.

I'm tired.  I feel beat up by teaching this week.  So far it has been such a roller coaster of happy and frustrating moments.  This week I'm on the frustrating down-swing.  I feel ineffective, which I know must be the root of my dissatisfaction.  I just don't get why sometimes I feel highly effective and other times I feel like I suck.  I've been told time and time again that this is what it feels like to be a first-year teacher, but sometimes it is hard to remember what it feels like when it's good.  I'm nowhere close to throwing in the towel, I am just feeling frustrated and think it's important to be honest about it.

Even with this feeling, I don't regret my decision to teach.  It has changed my life.  It has made me tougher and given me back a lot of my self confidence in dealing with people that went missing for awhile.  It has gotten me out of working in a windowless cube for eleven hours a day, (not that I'm working less, because really I'm working more, and for far less money).  I now know what the weather is like outside and get to actually be outside during daylight hours.  I get to watch the seasons change and hardly sit in front of a computer.  I get to talk to people all the time, young and old.  I finally use my Spanish.  I get to be a dork and the kids love me all the more for it.  Even if my hours are long, I get some flexibility in choosing when to spend them, and I get more than three weeks off a year.  Most days I feel like I'm making an important difference in the world, even if it is hard.

So with that little dose of honesty, I will gather myself together and do it all again tomorrow.