Reflecting...

Taking time to look back on all that you have learned and how you have changed is such an important part of life. With today being our last real day of class we participated in a reflective activity and I a so thankful for the experience I have been through over the summer. Time flew by incredibly fast but I have learned an enormous amount and grown in both professional ad personal ways. I am thankful or the great administrative staff that I have to lead me and mostly the diverse teachers who are going through this experience with me. Although we all have such different opinions, personalities, perspectives, and pasts... We all have the same heart for teaching and passion to help our future students achieve greatness...

Tonight I am just thankful.

Everything else...

So I am at a point right now where I feel like I don't even have time to have any sort of personal life. It has been a little difficult for me because I feel a bit like I am drowning and losing of sight of who I really am.
I completely understand that doing this takes a lot of effort and that for the time being, my passion for teaching needs to take priority over the rest of my life. However, I absolutely do NOT want to become some sort of teaching robot, which is the way I feel lately. I feel like being an effective teacher takes a lot of skill with balancing because while I feel that I want to plan everything out completely and think of every single possibility so that I make no mistakes in this crucial first year, I also want to be a happy well rounded example of a person for my students. (oh and for myself)
So no, don't give up on trying to create structure and planning as much as possible. Just make sure that you don't burn yourself out... Take a deep breath, ENJOY the people in your life, and take some time for those important things that just make you happy to do sometimes.