A Year to Remember or, What He Said...(My Confessions)

Scott in Nashville was MUCH more honest in his confession than I was originally prepared to be. After reading this post, I changed my mind...

This year was a year to remember for all the wrong reasons.

I returned after a 7 year hiatus in a leadership position. Anxious to reconnect and feel like my school was home and the teachers were family and that I would have a team to work work and be welcomed  warmly.

IT. DIDN'T. HAPPEN.

I floundered.
I cried, a lot. (But not in front of the children)
I raised my voice...way too often.
I wasn't very nice at times. 
I didn't have enough fun with my students.
My students didn't have enough fun with me.
I didn't run my classroom according to my core beliefs.

IT. WON'T. HAPPEN. NEXT. YEAR.

You see, I have found a job teaching Primary (Kindergarten) in a tiny school that already feels like home with staff that already feel like family. There are as many students in the entire school as there was in the wing my classroom was in last year. I am so very excited! I have learned a TON in the past year. I have a wonderful support system and I am ready to move forward and make 2013-14 a year to remember due to all of the great things that will happen in my classroom! 

"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. My personal approach creates the climate. My daily mood makes the weather. As a teacher, I posses a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be an instrument of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized."  
~ Haim Ginott