Crisis, the beginning of it all...

I am searching for myself. I am trying to find my bliss. I have so much passion and excitement for teaching, my free time is spent finding and thinking about things for the classroom. The challenge is finding useful and creative ways to use objects and ideas without paying a lot of money. Teachers rarely have a lot of excess spending money, yet somehow I always find a way to buy what I need to make my classroom amazing. 

I love being in the classroom, setting it up for the best use of the room, planning curriculum ideas, and then implementing them. Sometimes they go great, others not so much. I find it challenging to meet all the requirements teachers are faced with each year, while also maintaining a creative open atmosphere. I often find myself pushing the limits as far as possible because children deserve to be respected and given the chance for a creative future. Often supervisors (the people in charge of how you work with children and choose the material for that work) do not realize that the clean, new plastic playground, with the neat edges and the clean grass is not as interesting or educational as the playground with found objects, dirt and water, or real tools where children are allowed to move and create with these objects. Children need these rich, authentic activities to be ready to learn about math, science, and even language arts. It is our job as teachers to bridge that gap between management and the children we know.

So here I am a teacher with passion in the middle of a crisis. I have a M. Ed in Child Development curriculum and instruction, Teaching Credentials and no job. I find myself suddenly a single mom of a teen aged son, my 18-year-old daughter is having a baby, and I don't know if I can keep my passion while teaching in a public school. I am currently in this crisis, I have been a single mom before, but I thought this was it, I had found my forever partner. He left, walked out with the rent due and me with no job. I am in the pit of the crisis. I am hoping that trying to find my bliss, trying to dig my way out will help other teachers who may not be in crisis but possibly are finding it hard to have that passion for teaching we all need. 

Two weeks ago I was reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, it made so much sense to me. I was fairly happy, I was searching to be a little bit happier with where I was. This is a great book, she really did a lot of research about happiness, and she is fun to read. She has the ability to talk about being happy, or doing the actions even when things around her are not working out the way she wants. She is honest and real and tells us the details we need to hear because none of us are perfect. She writes about feeling like a failure, and still going. These are things I need to hear. Many self help happiness books tell you to act like it's already there, but forget to tell you that it is going to be rough sometimes, it is going to be hard to get through and do your actions but to keep doing them, she does this and very well too. While this week I am single and still jobless The Happiness Project has encouraged me to pursue my bliss. 

So here I am a Jobless teacher who wants to teach with passion and excitement, I would like to share that excitement and passion with my students, children and hopefully other teachers. 

Many Blessings