Whew...

It's mid-winter break where I student teach. My only response is thank goodness. I was dying...seriously.

Alright, so I had settled into a cry every other Friday schedule which I was not ok with. The first time it happened was after I had discovered all of these terrible things about my student's home lives. It literally broke my heart. When I was grading their papers that night at my apartment I came across one of them who has it particularly awful. This student had wrote about how I was awesome on the bottom of their paper...and I just started crying.

I think the frustration I was feeling was from my inability to do anything. I feel overwhelmed with the amount of time, effort, and energy it is taking to plan lessons, teach them, and keep up with the record keeping. Also, the amount of work I have for my grad classes is piled in there too and keeps growing as the professors find new ways to "help" us learn. Really, that just means more meaningless, monotonous, yet time consuming papers to write or videos to edit/upload. So...once you pile this workload together with my lack of sleep and the fact that my heart is more excited to care for and teach my students then do this stupid work...I'm in tears.

I'm going to be a teacher because education is the great equalizer of our world. In America, if you are smart enough and work hard enough you will achieve success regardless of where you come from. However, someone has to help you and give you the chance to catch up. Also, students spend soooo much time at school. That is an amazing window of opportunity for a teacher to show kids who have been rejected and hurt by their lives that they are loved and worthy of being cared for. That being said the fact that my time is consumed by pointless grad work and sitting through ridiculous classes on education theory frustrates me to no end.

The kind of "i'm cussing on my way out the door so annoyed I don't want to talk to anyone" kind of frustration.

So yea...when I feel like I'm not doing enough and my kids average an F on their next test...that leads to the second time I start crying. I had felt as though I hadn't put enough effort in or done enough and then they failed...it felt entirely on my shoulders. When you feel that...but also feel that you are already maxed out on time and effort...you feel a bit desperate. At least I did. Thank goodness that didn't come till this week.

I've had a four day weekend to recover and an amazing weekend it was. I prefer to tell people who have made it amazing to their faces...so I'll skip doing that here. However, a church retreat in Ohio was exact that...a retreat. I forgot my computer at school (not on purpose, but glad about it nonetheless) and I was in the middle of nowwhere Ohio. The stress and busyness of Ann Arbor was long gone and I got to slow down and re-prioritize my life. I retreated, I ran away, but to the best place ever...the woods and God. If you know me at all you know that if you can't find me or things need to be figured out I'm going to be at a beach watching waves or sitting in the woods...ask my friends...I do it everytime. My Dad has actually told me to go sit at the beach when I've needed to recover from some of the knocks life has thrown me.

So now I'm ready to go at it again. I have half of February and all of March before the next break. It's going to be a long haul, but I hope to remember that its not how much I'm doing but that I'm trying to do something at all. It'll be good...it may feel like failure...but its gonna be good.