Things you never learned with your credential

As much as I've gone to school over the last year and a half, there are so many things that I haven't learned in the classroom. This is just a few of them that I wish I had:

*How to multi-task 5,000 things at once- parent emails, administration requests, colleagues who speak another language

*How to pare down the curriculum to what's actually necessary and enhance it with project-based learning

*How to best manage transitions (no matter how many yoga posters I put up in the room)

*How not to feel isolated when you are in stress that no one around you understands

*How to enjoy hugs from former students and value each moment even though you are racing from one thing to the next

*How to appear to the outside world that you have it all together- that you are confident and capable riding to school on your bike with your watermelon helmet (even though you aren't)

*How to prepare for observations with administration, even though you've written up so many lesson plans that you can't even count them

*How to find time to go to the bathroom, drink water, not get pulled in one million directions

*How to find time to "make things your own," do what you love, create a space that expresses the classroom environment that you want to create, even though it might mean staying at school until all hours in order to do so

*How to decrease expectations- for yourself, that is

But for the moments at the end of the day in which you feel validated over a beer with a friend, it's worth the effort and the struggle.