This blog was re-restarted because of needing a hobby.

Which is pretty much why I have told exactly one person about it. I am shouting into a hole, and for some reason, that is fine with me! I had those weighty concerns a year and a half ago or so. I am still full of weighty concerns, but at this point they have to do with the field of education, my beloved fourth-graders, planning a wedding, dancing, and the meaning of life and love and friendship. In writing for myself, I figure, why not have an unrelated, unthemed blog which only strangers who click "next blog" can read?! I love it.

So, okay. Teaching. And children. Teaching the children. I am so torn, all the way! So, so much of me is entirely frustrated (one month into my fruitful teaching career) with just how far down one has to reach now in order to get to these kids these days. That's not a lament against the district, the state, even only the country, to a certain extent. The state of the world today, my friends. Entertainment, novelty, and guaranteed success are demanded on one side; ever-demanding curriculum mastery and standardized testing expectations on the other. Same coin, that whole deal. You can't get to one via the other. That's another thing, I have to learn to limit my 'can't's. I've only been doing this for like five seconds. I just don't see using post-its as the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment. I'm a patient person, but I don't have the patience. I'm a very caring person, but I don't care enough. I have been too smart, too gifted and talented, too quick to understand the plight of a fourth-grader reading at a second-grade level. I saw home videos of myself over Thanksgiving. I was reading better when I was three than some of my kids are reading at nine and ten. Today, everyone is either "TAG" (for some reason, that just grates on my ears. It's "gifted and talented," not "talented and gifted," and certainly not "TAG") or special ed. You're either brilliant, or you have a learning disability. Oh, he has trouble with his working memory. Her testing anxiety around not being able to understand the material makes her test scores even lower than they would be. It's very hard for him to sit still for longer than seven minutes; it's also very hard for him to keep all his papers in order, which makes it difficult for him to complete homework. If it takes you longer than ten minutes to do this worksheet, then forget about it. Say you tried, and we'll go over it tomorrow. I literally could go on for hours, but these are all real-life examples that just about kill me every time. And it's the party line! These are things a good teacher does! In any case. Let me open with that.