Fall is Coming... But Not Much

I think fall comes a lot faster when you are a teacher. Of course, this is my first year teaching, so I will not claim to be an expert by any means, but here are the facts:

1. The school year was over and I had exactly 1 week before summer camp started to have a "summer break".

2. Summer camp was 6 weeks long but felt more like 2 seconds.

3. Summer camp ended last Friday and I have been in my new classroom EVERY weekday since trying to get things set up... Yeah, still not done...

4. Teacher meetings start NEXT WEEK (YIKES!)

5. All of the above means that I have been at a school for all but a week since summer started... Yeah, I may not be teaching summer school next year...

Do not get me wrong, I am super excited to start my first year of real full-time teaching. I mean after student teaching last year, I must admit that the thought of actually getting paid to teach (although let's be real... teachers are not getting paid much as we all know) is pretty darn exciting. Still, it seems that it is all happening REALLY fast. At the same time, I wish it would go faster. I want to get to that point where I know my students and we have great relationships in our classroom. I want to understand them and laugh at their silly fourth grade jokes and enjoy all of their different personalities, I want to get to the point where I understand how they learn best and I can teach in ways that help them grow and improve more than they thought they could, I want to give them the tools they need to meet their goals and teach them things that encourage them to make new goals that they never even considered before.

Still I know that first I have to get through the week of trying to hang posters on textured brick walls (I hate 3M products more now than I did that night our picture frame fell off the wall and tried to kill us in our sleep), through labeling EVERYTHING, through meeting new teachers and staff members and trying to remember all of their names, through new teacher orientations, through parent open house/curriculum night (this is really the scariest thing... I don't like thinking about it, and through the first few weeks of planning lessons and setting routines. I know I have to do all of these things before I can really have the chance to be the teacher I want to be...

This is likely why I have been listening to Christmas music all week while setting up my room. I feel that by the end of the first semester (around Christmas time) I will know my students better, they will know me better, and I will finally be where I want to be as a teacher. So although fall is coming, I wish it would just come a little faster and move right on to winter. Not to mention the fact that I am getting sick of shorts and the sweaters in my closet have been calling my name for days ;)

So here is to Christmas time, 155 days left for anyone else out there who is counting.