Dare I say I found my place? Im crossing my fingers and hoping its so....

     As I am typing this dealing with a loooooonngggg week  in December, I am still happy and like where I am. Teaching 7th grade English at a charter school that focuses on Classical education approach, I am happy and enjoy my students even when dealing with the frustrations typical of teaching.  This year has still been hard thanks in part to Covid and also there has been restructuring with administration and teachers.  That part of it has been the most stressful and yet I find myself considering things I would do with certain changes,  any one who know me knows I am a planner.  The best part is I have shared some of my ideas and others think my ideas are a good as well.  This is once again inspiring my to plan and get ideas ... I am now thinking of trying to help work on curriculum  for the school.  Going around to the teachers and sort of set up a curriculum guide slash pacing plan.  Also look for other solutions to implement what the underlying goal is for the students to learn.  One of my goals is to implement a 40 book reading goal for next year.  There would be some finagling with the expectations for the curriculum overall all in order to implement this but I am hopeful.  One of the things I am determined to do is to get the kids reading stamina up.  There are several people I follow looking for inspiration to reach this goal now.  There has been some success with my First Chapter Fridays (the problem I run into is Friday is a shortened day and I don't always have the time to do First Chapter Friday).  Though I am hoping with tweaking and contortion I can find a way to make FCF work each Friday for next semester.  Then hopefully I can roll out the extra credit assignment I have planned which has the students doing review of books in my library and creating QR codes for the kiddos to be able to scan and get peer recommendations on books in my library.  I have also decided to create a donors choose account because while our school is growing the library is at the elementary building (which is a about 5 miles away) and they dont have a wide selection of middle school age books.  I want to expand the selections and have the books available for middle to high school ages.  I have a few challenges for those as well (eye rolling really hard here because I don't have the space  for me to be able to do this and I need to figure out organization for genres and be able to have materials set up for that fashion).  

    But I remain hopeful, I can see growth for not just me but the school, I want to make this school a place where people are impressed when students tell them they attend.  I know we can get there and I want to be a part of the ground floor measures to create what it could be.  The school has been around but it right now is currently experiences growing pains as high school os added to the ages groups that are served. But with all this going on a desire for me to go back and get my Masters degree in curriculum and design is becoming a much stronger idea that I am struggling to ignore.  Needless to say I think I have found my place where I belong :) I can see myself growing and possibly achieving the goals that I have only been brave enough to whisper to Tim.  Here's to growing and flourishing in the place where I think I am planting roots. ;)