Swimming up Stream (or is it sitting in the shallows)

Oh ya, once again my traditional ways have outlasted the trends as I opened the paper today to see an article about people turning away from Facebook. (You can read the entire article here.) Well, I am glad to say that just like my resistance to acid wash in the 80's my reluctance to be trendy has served me well. As you can see on July 20th of this year I posted the same complaints with Facebook on this very blog. Now, I just have to wait for this whole tattoo thing to blow and my pasty white, ink free skin will become the hottest thing since desert boots.

A month and a half in

Well, it's mid October and I am a month and a half back into my new old career again. Since I have gone back to the classroom from admin people are always asking me how it is going and really the only answer I have been able to give is FANTASTIC! It's great to feel like I'm working in education again as opposed to managing the behaviour of children and adults who chose to act like children. My only real regret is that I agonized over the decision when I knew in my heart it was the right thing for me to do. it has been a great experience to see my school, students and staff from the classroom and compare it to my perspective from the office. I must say, the view is definitely better from the classroom. However, the best part of my career change come not at work but at home when I sit around the dinner table with my family and we discuss how our days went. Instead of being frustrated about discipline cases, mind-numbing supervision, or mundane scheduling tasks I tell my sons about the neat lesson we did in class or the goofy thing some grade 11 did. My sons get to see me enjoying school as a place of learning and social interaction. Sure there are still frustrations but they are now sidebars in my day surrounded by learning. I don't regret my time in admin as I believe it has made me a better educator by giving me a broader perspective and it has definitely allowed me to return my focus to the classroom instead of looking out and wondering what else there is.