Moving Ahead

On Wednesday, I packed up all of my teaching supplies and moved them into my garage. In my mind it was the 'official' start to my year at home. The class that I started the year with had their last day of the school year Thursday and all the teachers had staff development on Wednesday. So it was eerily quiet in the halls of Brassfield as I packed my things. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to get everything done and even more surprised by how I was able to approach it as 'work' and control my emotions. Don't be misled, I'm very excited to stay home with my kids, but I LOVE being a teacher and if I have to say it myself, I'm pretty good at it! :) Next year would have been my 12th year! I know I'm going to miss it!

It's hard for me to not reminisce about my experiences over the years. I can still remember my first year in Jacksonville, NC; I should apologize to those kids! LOL Even though I had a great education from James Madison University, plenty of 'practice' with helping in other teachers' classrooms, and a wonderful Student Teaching experience, I'll admit, I had no idea what I was doing! Luckily I had a great mentor and wonderful team of teachers and a great conference called 'I Teach K' to help. I spent the next 4 years doing everything in my power to grow and learn as a teacher and loved every second of it. In my 4th year of teaching, I earned National Board Certification and continued grow as a professional. By my 6th year, I was named the Teacher of the Year at my school, Underwood.

It has always been more than just a drive to be good at my job, I truly enjoy doing 'teacher' things. I often call it my 'hobby' and my job. It was nothing for me to stay at school until 8pm and go in on the weekends just to work on special projects to do with my kids. Plus I spent hours searching the internet for teaching ideas. I figured things would change when I had kids of my own, but it didn't right away. Lacey was born during my 8th year of teaching. The night I went into labor with her (two weeks early) I had been at school until 7pm working on maternity sub plans. I took 12 weeks off with her, but she and I both spent a lot of time at school during my maternity leave! I returned to work 2 days before Christmas break. As a work-a-holic teacher who was passionate about her job, I had the BEST possible childcare situation for Lacey's first year of life. One of my former student's mom still had more children at Underwood and lived within walking distance. She agreed to pick up Lacey from my classroom just before the bell rang in the morning and drop her off at the end of the day. So Lacey and I could stay at school in the evenings as long as I wanted. Luckily that changed when she began going to daycare. I still spent too much time on work stuff, but my priorities did change quite a bit. To be honest, I NEVER pictured myself as the type of person who could truly put work aside. This whole situation with Lawson has really adjusted our priorities!

Lawson is 18 weeks old now, but he's only been home with us for 6 weeks, the standard maternity leave. If I were not taking the year off, my leave would have been over the week we brought him home! Since the doctors felt he just should not be exposed to a daycare situation for at least one year, for me to stay home was a no-brainer. After everything that has happened and all that we've been through, I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to spend a year at home with my children, doctor's orders!