Where you invest your love, you invest your life

Mumford and Sons. I've been thinking a lot about that line after I heard them perform live at Coachella in a crowd of 20,000 people, going ga-ga over the Irishmen. The song is "Awake my soul" and seems to me to connect a lot to what I've been thinking and feeling lately.

I've been working so hard at my job and giving my love to these kids, sometimes I feel to no avail. I'm wondering if I didn't do it, would it matter? Would the 13-year-olds that I mentor care if I stopped showing up

for them? I sometimes think that they just need a warm body in the room. But the reality of it all is that where I'm putting in the time, the efforts, making relationships, there I'm investing my life.

I'm listening to the kid who is acting out, I'm emailing a parent back about how to better serve the school community with an online lost-and-found system, and I'm working until 7 PM trying to create better learning environments.

But would I want it any other way right now? Sometimes I think that having another outlet would help for me to pour into, but I don't think so. I wouldn't have funny stories to tell at night to keep people laughing or be able to drink sparkling wine on a weeknight to recover from the day or perform science experiments where I'm throwing popcorn in the air, so that my kids can act as birds trying to catch insects.

Har har, har har, har har, har har.

Coming out on the other side

The camping trip with the first graders last week was a turning point for me. A turning point that after the trip, after spring break, it will almost be summer. Meaning that I will have made it through my first year teaching. Two grade-levels, an intense private school, tutoring and babysitting on top of it. That's just the negative: there is actually a lot of positive. A well-resourced school with intelligent, wonderful families who send their talented children to me, who will I believe change the course of the world someday. I want to jump up and down and scream at the top of my lungs, I'm so excited to have made it this far.

Spring break for me has been less than climactic after this shift. It's been getting things done that I normally don't get to do, spending time with people that I care about, and catching up on things that are on my "to-do" list. Figuring out jobs and what I'll be doing next year, as well as putting everything in God's control. Realizing that no matter how hard I try, I'm not going to be the one who is making the choice.

I've started to exude this inner confidence and calm that is unlike me. But I think that going through this year has made me come to terms with owning my inner strength. I now take naps in the middle of the afternoon (because it's Lent, and I'm supposed to do something nice for myself each day). I laugh a lot, especially around six-year-olds who wear monkey pajamas and call me MEGGGIIIIIEEE. I knit. I can better pursue friendships. My mind turns to self-pity less often. One day soon I will start painting again.

P-A-C-T

I just submitted it and the weight has lifted. I'm about to burn it onto a CD and then this chapter of my life will be closed, or I hope. Earning a credential, though I want to minimize it, has been this incredible journey of making a decision about what I want to do as a profession, committing the time to pursuing it outside of my job, and having an amazing group of people in my cohort who are going through the same things I did. Who will talk to me for an hour when I just needed someone to tell me "Submit it" or who I can talk about charter schools with or who I can go to concerts on a weeknight with or who I can drink with on Friday night.

I'm scared about losing this group of people as much as I am about moving to New York this summer or submitting my report cards for my school administration to review. I have learned that we learn best from each other, which is what teaching should actually be about.

Avenue Q

I might just as well be Kate Monster.

She has big eyes, brown hair, and she's a monster kindergarten-assistant teacher who lives in a city and hasn't found love yet. Her mentor teacher is crazy and calls her one day to sub for the class, in which she hopes to implant progressive ideas into the defunct curriculum. When she finds a boy named Princeton to love, she is on the top of the world. Long story short, but Princeton breaks her heart and then begs for forgiveness by asking for money from everyone he knows in order to help Kate start her Monstersorri school.

So, I'm a muppet stereotype. We knew that all along.

Happy

There's this new documentary called Happy that hasn't even opened yet but it's been in my thoughts since I saw it last night. It talks about how 50% of our happiness is genetic, the other 10% comes from our circumstances, social status, etc., and the other 40% from the following 5 things:

1) Gratitude

2) Exercise/meditation

3) Being a part of a community

4) Giving back in some way, getting outside of yourself

5) Enjoying an activity such that you get into it- the "flow" and feeling like you are doing something worthwhile

I have all of those things and I find myself unhappy sometimes. I don't realize all of the good that I do have in my life, I don't realize how important it is to take a yoga class or meditate each day, how lucky I am to live where I live.

Colored tights

have earned me respect from the French teachers I worked with, made me recognizable along my bike route to and from school, and have continued to add to my Ms. Frizzle-like reputation.

I'm thankful that I can wear colored tights in February in California and not freeze. Make it through another week of first-year teaching. Go to counseling and feel like I am connected to the counselor that I am seeing. Talk to my brother on the phone. Be in the sunshine and soak it in- on the fourth floor of my school during a yoga class, at the Grove on a sunny day, on the playground. Read-aloud books that I would want to read as a kid. Try to teach kids the way that I had been taught. Eat and share community with other people. Celebrate important events in other people's lives. And more than anything else, realize that by expecting nothing, I am always pleasantly surprised.

Me Five

Third graders are slowly but surely winning my heart over. They may not hug me the minute I walk into a room, but there will be a Turkish boy who will say to me "Hi Miss Garner" every time he sees me, like he means it, which will be worth just as much.

They will ask me what I am doing there when it isn't my day to have English with them and sometimes talk back and threaten me with "Why?" or "I didn't do anything!" But, they will also be able to write letters to Michelle Obama that are meaningful, personal and heartfelt, talk about their feelings in a more mature way, and comment on each other's work on a gallery walk around the classroom. They may not be able to say the most positive things, but they will be able to comment on another's by saying "Me five!" and "Me seven!" attaching their notes to everyone else's. They will think that somehow I became a teacher who took race into consideration when I accidentally wore eye makeup the day that I was showing them how whites and blacks were treated while teaching them about MLK.

Their bay blades will be their life lines, as well as the Wimpy Kids, Time Warp trios, American Girl and Junie B. Jones books. They will remind you about something until you actually do it- 3 times a day if necessary. They will play games like Animal Herders and Give or Take through recess if they have a chance.

They won't remember you as their first grade teacher but they will think that you are somehow older than their parents. It's taken almost three months to get used to this new teaching gig, but I think that I'm liking the challenge and the excitement of 22 eight-year-olds each day.