Saying Goodbye...

So I'm saying goodbye to my grade 2's on Wed.  The regular teacher got her dr's ok and is coming back to work soon.  How awful do I feel for wishing a lovely person was too sick to work?  (I'm a terrible person!)

As I read her email telling me when she's coming back, my heart sank lower with every line.  In fact, as lame as it may sound, I'm fighting back tears right now at the thought of leaving my kids.  I felt so at home there.  It makes it a lot easier to know what an amazing teacher and kind woman their regular teacher is, so I have no concerns about whether or not they'll be "alright".  But I'm still heartbroken.

The past few weeks have been downright heavenly.  I've felt a sense of purpose and accomplishment I hadn't had for a long, long time.  I felt like I was part of a community, and a wonderful one at that.  I'm going to miss that so much.

I've been avoiding thinking about when my time there would end.  Kind of fooling myself into thinking I'd stay until Spring Break.  But now the end is not only real, it's soon.

*sniff*

Chasing...

So how much do I love my students?
Well, in art we were doing Northern pictures (igloos and what not) and Tasha made a picture of a fish being chased by a penguin being chased by a seal being chased by a polar bear being chased by a person with a pitchfork. To die for!!

Last spring I did a children's camp in the UAE (middle east).  It was a mixed age group from preschool to grade 5 which was challenging.  Here the kids are in my suite (yup, I got a suite!) doing Smartie graphing.  No one minds doing math when it involves eating chocolate!

My amazing hubby and I at a friend's wedding in January.

Not only is he totally hot, but he's also sweet, romantic, funny and totally nuts for me!

Ah, Humility...

Kids are so cute.
Today was 100th day at school so pretty much all day everyting we did had to do with the number 100.
I asked the kids to try to find 100 things in the classroom with red on them. One little guy did it WAY before anyone else.
He brought up his list to me and I exclaimed, "You did it! You rock!'
He looked at me quizzickly and said, "I do?"

Love it!

Teaching At Last!

So I finally have a "real" teaching job teaching grade 2 for a few weeks. It's a really nice class with only 17 kids! I didn't know schools had small classes anymore!
It's so much fun teaching grade 2, they're still small enough to be really cute but old enough to understand a lot and have good conversations with.
It's really sweet how worried they are about their sick teacher that I'm filling in for.