So I’ve been mulling over the change to take place.  The truth of the matter is that I’ve taught first grade before, but I was a new teacher and it wasn’t my best teaching experience.  But as a friend pointed out, that was then and most experienced teachers look back and their beginning years and say oh, yeah – I’m so much better than I was then!”   As we grow and mature we get better at the art of teaching.

What it comes down to it, there are two things that I get stuck on: One, I have fully accepted the identity of a kindergarten teacher.  In fact, when I fell in love with teaching kindergarten I felt that I came home, that I’ve always been a kindergarten teacher at heart – so  now who am I if not a kindergarten teacher?

Second, I know I’m a really good kindergarten teacher, I know that sounds conceited, but I know and love and live and breathe kindergarten – I really am good at it – the way a confident teacher who loves her job is good.  I have a fear.  What if I’m not as good as a first grade teacher as I am a kindergarten teacher?

Well, this is it.  The change has been made.  I’ve new curriculum to learn.  I have a new team teacher to teach with.  I’m delighted that I’ll have my returning students – we had a fabulous year last year and I’m excited to continue to grow with them!  So – I’m using this process to expose my fears and face them head on.  I’m ready to begin this new school year with a Can Do attitude. 

My principal has faith that I will do a great job, my close friends and cheerleaders have perfect confidence in me.  Now I just need to grab hold of that faith that I will do everything in my power to be the best teacher I can be.  I have a lot at stake, not only my reputation as a teacher, which I take very seriously, especially in the private school community, but my daughter will be in my class again this year.  I owe it to all my students, parents, administration and co-teacher to begin the school year with a positive and enthusiastic attitude.

We’re going to have a great year!

I did all the work for my workshop presentation and then I came home and I’ve practically avoided all technology for two weeks. 

Diagnosis: A mild case of techno burnout.

It can be great, practical and timesaving.  It can also be a black hole for my time.So now I am looking for my happy medium. 

My webcam is installed, I’ve used it once, and I have plans to use it once or twice this week.  Check.

I’ve updated my classroom website, I’ve been meaning to for two weeks.  I had to edit pictures to blur the faces of the children.  We also just had a really fun and busy couple of weeks in the classroom.  But now that’s done.  Check.

I found some good kidspiration templates that I tweaked a little for my students and added a cool website link to one.  Great tech lesson! Check.

I am working on my first blog post in a few weeks.  Check.

Have been using my Google calendar to organize my most dreaded time of year – end of school year.           

     Hmm.  Spring fever – probably an underlying cause to my techno burnout – actually it’s probably a bit of life burnout.  My husband is currently working out of state.  He’s been gone this time for about two and a half weeks and doesn’t return for another two and a half weeks.  Add to that the end of the year classroom to do items, one daughter in dance class and another in soccer, not to mention homework!  Oh, and yes, my youngest (4) has been tantruming again – I’ve been lucky, no teeth marks yet!

NO WONDER I FEEL BURNT OUT!

So, now what to do?  Prioritize!  My Ning activities – bare minimum.  Twitter- it’s been calling my name, but I have to put it aside – that black hole thing I was talking about, so it gets the least amount of my time right now.  I think all those awesome links I love to follow were leading to my feeling of being overwhelmed.  So twitter is very limited, mostly just what I see on BeTwittered when I check my iGoogle. 

Now I need to breathe deep.  I just realized that just the process of writing this down helps me to identify what’s going on.  There’s a great reason for blogging – public journaling of your thoughts.  Could save people thousands of dollars they would otherwise pay a shrink (grins).