I can't believe over a year has passed since my last post! The past year absolutely flew by. My last post was towards the end of our trip/belated honeymoon to Ireland. Once we returned home, we immediately packed up my brother's Crown Victoria and drove across the country to spend a month in San Diego, California. There we helped fix up a Hansen family home and then drove back to Virginia just in time for school to start.
Year two of teaching was just as difficult and rewarding as year one, but in different ways. My first year of teaching seemed true of what many veteran teachers tell you - you are just trying to keep you head above water. That entire first year, I did everything in my power to get through teaching a year's worth of Chemistry on pace. My second year (and this past year) of teaching I was very blessed to be teaching the same subject, so the getting through the content was not as difficult. However, I struggled more with relationships with parents and standing up for myself this year. I dealt with very nasty confrontations from multiple parents during the course of the school year, where I was often berated (once within earshot of some of my co-workers and other parents). To be fair, in each case there was at least one thing that could have spurred on a productive conversation, but the majority of all of the conversations were unjustified statements. I struggled with taking some of the rude things that were said personally and beating myself up over them. But, God is good and faithful and He blessed me with affirmation and encouragement from friends and co-workers. By the end of the year, learned how to better discern the between the truth and lies and how to respectfully stand up for myself and what I think is best for my students.
Also during the past year, Jonathan started a new job and we adjusted to a schedule with both of us working. God also blessed us with the opportunity to serve our church,
Portico Arlington, by leading a community group. We get together to fellowship with some great people every Tuesday night. Each week, we start out with a meal and then discuss the sermon from that Sunday and try to dig deeper and apply it to our lives. It has been amazing to watch God's work through building relationships, directing conversation and answered prayers. Please pray that God would continue to bless our community group in these ways.
I am currently enjoying some time off with summer break. Looking back, this is the first time I've felt able to actually
rest since Jonathan and I got married. However, I do want to still be productive, so stealing an idea from my friend Karen's blog, I have made a list of things that I would like to accomplish before I return to school at the end of August.
Summer To-Do's:
- start blogging consistently again
- scrapbook Ireland trip
- scrapbook road trip/California
- scrapbook recent Wyoming trip
- move & reorganize/unpack
- start a recipe journal with Jonathan
- reorganize school files
Well, I guess that is it for now. Look out for posts summarizing some of our trips this past year and some recipes I've recently discovered!
