First Day of School

Well, it's official -- I have now reentered the world as a fully participating and contributing member of society, now that school has started. Not that I wasn't contributing before, BUT my contributions consisted of cleaning move-in junk from bedrooms (yes, we did move in a year ago, and yes, it takes that long!), vacuuming slightly more often, bleaching blinds, cooking dinner and doing laundry slightly more than normal, travelling all over the world, meeting people, and reading LOTS of books.

As of the beginning of school yesterday, my new contributions are filling young minds with tons of fun knowledge, trying very passionately to get them excited about Church History (contrary to popular belief, it IS possible :0), and reinvesting my time in students' lives in general. Time to fully turn my brain back on -- for a good 10 weeks, it's been wondering why I haven't been using it quite as much as normal. Although I am convinced that having 2 1/2 months of a little bit less brain activity is quite healthy for me and absolutely necessary -- we teachers call it a "mental health vacation."

Anyway, I am happy to say that thus far, I have a great group of students. One class doesn't talk very much (they have told me that will soon change). However, the other four make up for it fully, one maybe even moreso than I would prefer (and it's primarily the boys!). I have an AMAZING study hall -- they actually study without me telling them to! And I have a teacher's aide this year -- I've never had one before, but I will have to figure out what a teacher's aide does......she is considering teaching in the future, so who knows what interesting things I can have her help me do. Oh, and I have 50% more students than I had last year (I think that's right). My classes went from 62 students last year, to 92 students this year......talk about adjustment! But thus far, it's been just fine. Today, we're having great discussion, talking about the apostolic fathers, many of whom were martyrs and analyzing their hard core faith. I love it. It makes me excited! If you ever want to know about Ignatius of Antioch or Polycarp or the plague of antinomianism, I would love to talk to you about them sometime :0) I'm getting excited just typing about it.