(I know, I know, it's Thursday of the following week, but I've opened up to this in my drafts and want to publish it, so I will.)
It's the end of week four and I have almost a month of (interrupted) teaching under my belt.
This milestone feels - and truly is - significant. Amassing a month of rainy days and stray hats and endless questions is no small feat. I sound like a broken record, but I really am so grateful for it all.
My friend, L, sent me a message this week about how happy she was that I was experiencing such a high pay-off after so short a time. She expressed the very thing that I had been mulling over in my shower the previous evening. Teaching is hard work, but it is also pure joy. Seeing kids really get something, or even begin to grapple with an idea fills me with an electric charge.
My shy kids are speaking up more, my capable kids are using their capability to help their classmates. The marking piles up and the pretty classroom labels come loose, but what does that matter in the face of these small victories?
This week was also one in which I began the reclamation of my humanity. I need to eat and sleep and read and write and soak up the sun. I need these things every day, not just on the Sabbath. Swapping my cycles of toil and leisure for work and rest (cf. Andy Crouch), won't come easily but it must come. And I am convinced that, in not too long a time, it will.
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