It’s Saturday and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by the host Ruth Ayres’ blog to read others’ celebrations.
The weeks go by so fast towards the end of the school year. The days turn sunny and warm, and life could be speeding past and passing me by, if I didn’t stop to appreciate moments in my every day life. The practice of celebrating each week has shifted my mindset and made me into a more positive person overall.
It’s not that I wasn’t positive before…I just was surrounded by negativity and sometimes gave in to the temptation to wallow in the complaining. I still have a lot of negative people around me a lot of the time, although I have removed myself from some of the most toxic negativity by avoiding certain people as much as possible. The practice of stopping to celebrate has given me back the appreciation of the incredibly complex and awesome job that I do each day. Lately we have been overwhelmed with more paperwork, more testing, more demands on our time and more mandates for the way we should be teaching. Many of my colleagues are being weighed down with that load and forgetting the beauty of the career that we have all chosen. I am grateful to this community for giving me a practice of celebration that helps me to be aware of when I am loving my job. Here are some of the best celebrations from last week:
We went on our big field trip to Madison. This is an hour and a half drive to visit our State Capitol among other things. The students are always very excited to go on such a big trip. We took a double-decker coach bus and it was a beautiful day. We went to the Wisconsin Historical Museum first. Then we had a guided tour at the Capitol building. Finally, we toured Camp Randall stadium, where the Wisconsin Badgers play football. Our trip was successful and I love that these kiddos will have some great memories of this day.
We are making a memory book of our fourth grade year. I had the students brainstorm all the things that they remember being special in their fourth grade year. We came up with a list that was two pages long. They included things like morning meeting and all the different read aloud titles. They remembered so many things that we have done together. I love that they have enjoyed so much about their fourth grade year!
I am also celebrating the fact that the nice weather has brought days that are perfect for visiting the Beer Garden in the park that is a few blocks away. I love the community and neighborhood in which I live. There are so many kids and dogs and people just enjoying the company of friends while also enjoying the weather and the park. It is so nice to have something like this within walking distance.
Lastly, I am celebrating finding out that I got the position at my school building for summer school. Although this means not attending the conferences that I attended last year, it is a needed boost to our income and I will also be able to organize some of my classroom closets over the summer. The summer school schedule is a nice one, we are there from 7:30-11:30 Monday through Friday. I am hoping to convince the building engineer at my school to let me stay later some days to work on organizing things. It is not a guarantee in our district that you will get summer school positions, so I am happy that I have this one.
What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!
What a fun trip. I always enjoy reading about class field trips because so many times those are eliminated because of budgets. Your students’ two page list says a lot about you as a their teacher and the special memories that you helped them create!!
So glad you had a fun field trip and are putting together a memory book for the year! Congrats on your summer school position. Hopefully, you’ll get to spend some time organizing things. I’m curious about which read alouds your kids liked and remembered from the year.
Andrea, I hear you about the negativity that can surround us and bring us into that toxic circle. Good for you to remove yourself from the chatter that causes dissonance.