Yom Kippur #DITLife 10-12-16

Today was a very boring day in the life of this teacher!  I had the day off in observance of Yom Kippur.  

I stayed in bed until 9am; a pure luxury!  Brought the dogs for a run around a field, went to visit my husband at his work, went grocery shopping, took a nap, tutored my tutoree for an hour, made dinner, sat in the hot tub and then went to bed.  Pretty interesting day, huh?

I purposefully didn't bring my laptop home with me on Tuesday because I had a day off, and I truly wanted to enjoy the day off and not think about work.  I did pretty well with that mission until about 8:30 pm when a colleague asked for some scores for a kid from a previous year.  This wasn't a huge inconvenience for me since I have the Google Drive app installed on my phone so I just took a few minutes to look that info up and sent it over to her.  Other than than, work was the furthest thing from my mind all day, and I'm going to be honest, I loved it!

And now for the questions....

Reflection Questions

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

I didn't really make any decisions at all today!  I guess the biggest, and best, one I made was to not bring my work home with me and just enjoy my day off.  It was nice to have those days of calm and relaxation.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I am really looking forward to working with teachers more closely this year.  The literacy coach and I did a brief presentation on what a coach is and how we can help, and I'm hopeful that lots of people got something out of it and will start utilizing me more.  A challenge has been spreading myself out across the whole building.  I have a core group of teachers who love having me in their room, and I tend to always be in those rooms.  I need to branch out more and visit every room. 

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

Recently I received some pretty bad news, (see question #5) and the amount of support, caring, and concern I received from my fellow teachers was amazing. I really felt loved and part of the community.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

I think I've fallen off the train of working towards my goal.  I wanted to participate in a twitter chat at least once a month, but I'm finding that I can't stay up late enough to do that.  I'm in bed by 9pm every night.  I also wanted to make sure I was more visible in every room this year, but as I mentioned above, I'm really struggling with that.  I made myself a schedule for the week of when math was being taught in my building so I could use it as a checklist and make sure I get into every room at least once a week.  Now I just need to start utilizing it!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

My surgery that was scheduled for October 4th got cancelled because my insurance decided they didn't want to pay for it.  I was completely devastated and had to take 2 days off to fight with the insurance company and doctors and play that back-and-forth game.  I am so happy to report that I just got word it has been approved now and I have rescheduled it for November 8th!!