What a Little Sunlight Can Do

As long as I've been a teacher, I've had serious doubts every January and February about my efficacy in the classroom, my worth as a human being, and my ability to keep going to the end of the year.  I'm not the only teacher who feels this way at this time of year: after all the effort to start the school year well, and the exciting build up to the holidays, the "honeymoon is over" in the New Year.

Add to it the feeling that I've been stuck inside, that I'm just going to waste.

Add to that the church's annual budget impasse.

But today, the sun was out, the temperature was up, and the parish gave the Vestry support for pushing forward -- "We all need to give more!"

I even got out on my bike for a twenty-ish mile ride, taking the photos below, sort of a 360 degree view of the spot on the Silver Comet Trail where I turned around in Hiram, GA.  In my ear buds, NPR was playing "The Pulse," a science program that focused today on "wilderness," and I was strangely delighted by the recorded sounds of birds.

Thinking about school, I remembered that my job is to open up the young minds to reading and writing; all the specifics about compound-complex sentences and the difference between "metaphor" and "simile" are secondary, and will come.  No worry!

Let's remember all this the next time I feel so down.