My school is “remaking” itself into a more high achieving learning environment and part of this has been a lot of serious study of ourselves. It has been pretty painful. I feel like I’ve been asked a million times what my strengths are. I could go on and on about my weaknesses, but lately I feel like I have no strengths.
Yesterday I was behind the bookcase in my office, pumping the milk, and I was thinking about things I could do to keep Ramona (and me) sleeping longer at night when I realized that I really like solving problems. It’s what I love best about kids. With kids you can begin anew each day. You can influence their environment! You can give them more attention, you can remove that negative stimulus, you can do 20 minutes of alphabet flash cards, you can put them in a different place in the crib! You can fix them!
This is what I loved about teaching first grade. There were many Fridays when I went home feeling like I wasn’t going to be able to go on, that if the kids kept not learning, talking over me, throwing chairs…..whatever…I was done with teaching. What always happened was that over the weekend I came up with a brand new system and Monday morning went about fixing the problems of the room. I feel the same way about Ramona. I feel like I get kids. I know when to apply the pressure, I know when to stick to my high expectations, I also know when to let go, and I know how to love. This filled me with a moment's delight. My strength is that I try hard and that I love kids, my strength is that I know when to let go and love.
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