Dear younger, louder, unemployed self,

 

Dear younger, less wise self still wondering if you'll ever get a real teaching job,

You do.  You sign a contract that says you'll be in charge of precious children, but you don't know you'll call them that yet or that they'll practically have their own Twitter feed.  Get excited, the way you get hired is perfect… (ly) crazy.  You'll sign the contract on Friday and start work Tuesday.  The night you sign the contract, you'll meet the parents.  Yeah, you don't even know what time school starts, where the bathrooms are, or really anything else except that this is a day you've dreamed of most of your life. 

You'll have a room full of real fire crackers.  The first semester, you'll give them too free of reign.  The end of the first and beginning of second semester you'll regret not hammering procedures into them for the first few weeks of school.  Hopefully you'll do better next year, if you survive that long. 

On the topic of survival, you'll have a lot of days where you'll want to quit and be a waitress.  You'll be confused, discouraged, tired, and think that people are asking too much of one human.  It's odd, but somehow the insurmountable gets surmounted and you live to see another sunrise.  It'll behoove you to plan ahead.  Sometimes you will, and sometimes you won't.  Sometimes you'll wing it and soar, but sometimes you'll wing it and crash.  You'll comfort yourself with the fact that kids are resilient and first year teachers are only first year teachers once.  Second year HAS to be easier.

You'll grow a lot.  Being a teacher is kind of like being on stage.  Your flaws and features are on display for your kids, their parents and your fellow teachers to see.  Sometimes you'll be so mad at your kids that you'll shout.  You don't lose your temper much at all, but work on keeping discipline redemptive but firm.  Keep the parents in the loop.  I know, they sort of terrify you.  It's OK.  Sometimes they'll get upset at you, but don't worry.  It's just because they love their kids, mostly. 

Oh, those kids.  Sometimes they will sort of make your breath catch in your throat when you think about the things they've been through or the way their life is hard.  It's second semester and you still haven't figured out how to keep PC18 from shouting out the answers.  Oh well, keep trying.  You'll call them your children affectionately, and when sad, heavy things happen, a great wave will well up in you that just wants to love and protect them.  Don't get me wrong, they'll frustrate you to no end.  They have to learn how to think.  Video games and fast food don't really improve higher order thinking skills.  Up day or down day, though, you love them dearly, and that's a start, at least. 

You'll learn how hard it is to balance being a first year teacher with the other stuff you want to do.  You'll work a lot of weekends and nights and holidays.  You'll realize you really haven't done anything hard in your life until now.  That's OK.  You survive that too, and you learn that God is faithful to provide what you need.  No exceptions.  Your RC will be awesome.  You'll talk through lots of things with them, joke with them, decorate cookies with them, roast marshmallows with them.  It's a pretty eclectic little band, but you'll get close. 

Believe it or not, YOU, LMS, are old enough to make grown up friends.  And you WILL make grown up friends.  Not college friends or high school friends, but actual people you meet as an adult and do things like have dinner and grab lunch and talk about work.  It's kind of weird, but you're pretty blessed to have people like Michelle and Greg around. 

The olden and golden friends haven't gone anywhere either.  Zanna is still your BFF.  You still hang out in Dallas on long weekends when you can.  In fact, SG is getting MARRIED to Alexander in May (I know, I know, it's about time), and you're in the wedding! 

So hang on, kiddo.  You're in for a wild ride.  It's a good one, and well worth the struggle. 

Your, uh, self,

Little Miss Sunshine

*image from http://www.mytypewriter.com/

The Trouble with Retail Therapy

I'm going to be straight with you.  

Right now, I want to go to the mall.  I want to walk in Forever21 and by the first sparkly thing I see.  I want to go into J.Crew and buy something, anything.  I want to hit up H&hipsterM and buy flowy long sleeved shirts or retro-patterned sweaters, potentially with elbow patches.  I'd like to just go blow some money on a watch at Charming Charlie's, maybe some crafty stuff at JoAnn's Fabrics, The Call by Os Guiness, some Toms Botas, some songs on iTunes. 

Will I?  No, it's 8 o'clock at night, and it's January, so it's remotely close to cold outside.  Instead I snarfed down my dinner, ate a few tortilla chips and served myself a bowl of ice cream.  The latter I ate while Pinterest surfing other people's dream closets, dream weddings, and dream workouts.  Fifteen minutes later, I emerged from my image/sugar-induced stupor and put the dishes away before ambling back to my bedroom to blog about this very phenomenon. 

It's been a hard week.  [I mean the word "hard" in a comparative-to-my-life sense, not that I actually have a hard life.]  One of my mentors is with Jesus now.  I haven't had an abundance of sleep.  The kids were crazy, I got a new student mid-morning, I sent a kid to the office, I had a relationally productive/emotionally challenging meeting.  There's more, but I won't bore you with the minutiae.  I was sitting in my classroom grading math homework just wanting to walk out the door and go shopping, go eat chocolate, go to Starbucks, go sit and cry, go get an office job. 

Granted, I knew spending money on sequin-ridden poly-blends, consuming large amounts of complex carbohydrates or gazing at someone else's dream haircut would not fix the issue.  Sure, they would serve as a cognitive diversion and a sort of emotional medication from what the real problem was, but they wouldn't encourage any sort of growth or healing or progress. 

Somehow I find it easier to just do fun things or "get over it" instead of dealing with whatever is bothering me.  In the case of school, I get frustrated and discouraged, then try to shrug it off instead of honestly assessing the things I need to work on and making an action plan for how I'm going to address them.  In the case of my mentor, I try not to think about it too much because I might end up with my face buried in the carpet in tears again. 

Feeling empty, feeling pain, feeling hunger, feeling loss are things I'm not accustomed to.  Looking criticism in the face and letting it humble me instead of harden me is not something that comes naturally.  This whole business of...

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness."

and

"Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed."

...is not my first response when life throws a curve ball.  Instead, I tend to want to pacify myself with stuff, pout, wallow, or quit.  I don't really want to sit and think about exactly why today was a bad day at school.  I don't really want to spend time getting carpet burn on my forehead crying out for God's comfort.  I don't really want to find a place to just be quiet - a Pinterest-less, social media-less, quiet place where I can think about how I'm spending my time or my money. 

What happens when my bank account is empty, my closet is full of boots, hipster sweaters, ochre colored jeans, and navy infinity scarves?  When my brain is so caffeine wired that I can't go a day without Starbucks or Dutch Bros or Coffee Bean?  When I have to have whatever it is - dark chocolate, cinnamon ice cream, a Diet Coke?  I'm left with all the problems I started with and have added being broke and sucrose-dependent. 

Insert your favorite kind of self-centered therapy here _________.  Whatever it is, it will leave you empty.  There is one Life-giver, one hope, one love.  His name is Jesus, and He came to save His people from their screwed up, broken, inward focused, self-gratifying, empty lives.

I am not sentenced to a life of futility and caffeinated retail therapy.  Tonight, my dinner prayer over my chicken pasta salad (thanks, mom) went something like this: Oh help.  That's as articulate as it got.  And I think that's all it takes. 

Love,

Little Miss Sunshine

Confession 63

My bloggery has been sorely neglected this past month, and I do apologize.  It's not that the PCs (precious children) have not been saying funny things or that I've run away and become a lion tamer, it's just that I haven't been writing much in the last few weeks.  Last night I posted a small adventure in Pinterest testing, but I have a hunch you really read this blog to hear about my 22 children and other outlandish scrapes and escapades… not how to take a layer of dirt off your face. 

If you ask me how teaching is going, I'll say this: "Oh, so great.  It's the hardest thing I've ever done, but it's great."  I know I'll say this because people keep asking, and that's what keeps popping out of my mouth.  I won't talk too much about the depths of difficulty, but you can read about that here, if you really want to. 

I have successfully survived being a teacher for 1 semester and 1 week.  YAY.  What's more, my 22 PCs have survived my tutelage for that long.  You might shrug that off and say that I'm made to be a teacher and of course they survived.  Why should I be surprised that they're all still there? 

Confession  #63: Buoyant, chipper, optimistic Little Miss Sunshine often finds herself riddled with self-doubt. 

The task seems a mountainous one, nearly insurmountable.  Educate these children.  Take them as they are, broken and wacky or sometimes sad family lives, unique talents, quirky as a chameleon, and teach them how to multiply, write a persuasive essay, what the Judicial Branch does, and what it means to live with integrity.  Make sure you're treating them fairly, but not equally, as each one needs something different.  Make sure you're pushing them hard, but don't wear them out.  Bring the low ones up to grade level, but challenge the advanced ones so they don't get bored. 

Make your teaching active, hands on, interdisciplinary, connected to real life.  Give them practice working solo and in groups because they'll need that when they go out into the real world.  Teach them how to read a science text, but also how to identify the rise and fall of plot as their favorite fictional characters live out their dreams.  Love them.  Be firm.  Be creative.  Be punctual.  Be organized.  Be intuitive.  Be professional.  Be personal.  Be sympathetic, but don't let them walk on you.

And I chose this.  It's my dream job.  Who am I to admit that "living the dream" scares the socks off of me and makes me want to stay under the covers some mornings.  Who am I to complain that something I chose is really hard. 

Inadequacy follows me like a shadow.  When friends reassure me that I'm a good teacher, all I can think of is how I could have taught number lines with leap frog instead of just using white board games.  When people say I'm a natural, all I can think of is how I forgot to write the parent newsletter last week.  I discount their praise because I know they don't know the full story.  I know how I failed today and yesterday and the day before that. 

Is that fair?  Is it fair to set myself up as a goddess, knowing better than the wisest people in my life?  To discount their encouragement because I don't think it's warranted?  Hold the phone.  Is all this fear stuff really just a bunch of pride and faithlessness? 

What I'm thinking:  I can't do this.

What I'm really thinking:  God will not actually keep His promise to sustain me in what He's called me to do.

What I'm thinking:  This is too hard!

What I'm really thinking:  I don't really trust God to give me the strength to survive difficult circumstances.

What I'm thinking:  I suck at teaching.

What I'm really thinking:  I have unrealistic expectations for a first year teacher, and I'm ignoring the encouragement of my coworkers, principal, family and friends. 

When you put it like that, the mask of inadequacy comes off and just looks like pride.  Maybe my job isn't that huge, or hard, or insurmountable.  After all, I serve a God who calls the stars by name.  

Overcome by grace, again,

Little Miss Sunshine

Pinterest Trial #174 - The Girl in the Milk Mask

Skepticism would not rank as one of my top three strongest personality traits.  In fact, most of my family and friends would probably bemoan the prevailing naivete that I seem to carry around.  Despite what they may think, I do apply a healthy dose of skepticism to life, especially when it comes to Pinterest and other home remedy/DIY solution blogs. 

I mean, are you sure that chic got her long flowing locks by washing it in apple cider and raw egg?  Does applying a cold compact of horse manure and Himalayan pink salt to your feet really cure your callouses?  Did that mom really make that Monsters Inc birthday cake, or did she sashay down the street and buy it at Costco? 

As I was frolicking through photos of bridesmaid dresses, boot socks, travel décor and 37 ways to use a cake mix, I found this one… "How-To Pore Strips" by Petit Elefant.  I have always found pore strips intriguing, fondly associating them with The Princess Diaries and Anne Hathaway.  Tonight I stayed in watching "Say Yes to the Dress" with the parents instead of indulging in my usual party habits.  (Ha)  I seized the day and the ingredients and got to work.

Here, for you, dear readers, is the process and result of my testing… 

You can see the original here.  http://petitelefant.com/how-to-pore-strips/

What you need:

 

Milk

Unflavored gelatin (I don't think you want Red 47 going in your pores…)

Bowl

Spoon

Microwave

Mix a tablespoon of gelatin with about 2 tablespoons of milk.  It'll just look kind of gloppy. 

Microwave it for 10-15 seconds.

Spread on your face using your hands, a popsicle stick, whatever you have lying around.

*Note, stay away from eyes and eyebrows - it's painful later if you don't… oops.

Let it dry for about 15 minutes.  Your face will start to feel tight.

Start peeling.  Wash off anything that doesn't get peeled off. 

Hellooooo new, clean skin!  In this case, the claims were authentic.  This concoction does really work, and is miles cheaper (and easier) than dragging yourself to Walgreens, forking over $15 and just doing the bridge of your nose. 

At your service,

Little Miss Sunshine

PS.  If there's ever anything you'd like aired, attempted on ilovemornings, just let me know.