Yesterday was my last day of teaching for the year and today I walked in to what will be my new classroom next year. I'm facing this change with mixed emotions. This year was tough. I had a really difficult group of second graders (and a delightful group of third graders) who made me question my career move on a daily basis. I hated my job and felt like I wasn't even good at it, two things that are definite exceptions to my normal approach to work. There were so many moments where I literally wanted to quit and walk out immediately, the only things stopping me were that I kept telling myself "I'm not a quitter" and the question without an answer- what would I do next? I finally tamed my little monsters (or they matured enough on their own, I'm not really sure) somewhere around Easter and since then, despite continued headaches, there have been enough positives that I'm back to enjoying my job most of my time (though, I am ecstatic to have summer vacation). and feeling like I am good at what I do after all.
So, back to today. We're changing buildings and along with that change, I'm changing grade levels. So today I walked into my nearly empty classroom from this year, loaded some straggler boxes into my car, and drove in circles through the forest until I finally found where I'll be working next year. My French co-teacher and I walked back and forth between the 2 classrooms that will be ours trying to picture next year and made a decision- I get the room on the right, she gets the room on the left. I know next year should be easier; the second year at the same job always is, but changing grade levels will add new challenges.
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| My new school building. My class is the right half of what you can see. |
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| Inside my new classroom |
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| The classy exterior- we're sharing the school with a special needs school and our classes aren't in this building at all, just in the out buildings in the back. |
On other levels, my French keeps coming along. I usually understand almost everything and while I still feel really awkward when I speak, I can always get by and can even manage to conduct (basic) parent-teacher conferences in French. I'm hoping to brush up on some verb tenses I don't know at all during the summer vacation and hopefully by next year I'll feel more confident and be pausing mid sentence less often.
My paperwork battle in France is mostly over and now that Cristian and I are feeling settled, it's hard to imagine uprooting ourselves and starting this whole residency/insurance/drivers license/language learning marathon again, so we're thinking of putting down roots. We're talking about buying a house, so I'm hopeful by this time next year we'll be homeowners. It's an unfamiliar idea for me, after so much country hopping, and I still can't quite wrap by head around the fact that we sort of accidentally ended up in France, but life is good here, despite the challenges, so why not?
