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A little over a year ago I posted about this teaching program I had joined. In that post (really it's only the one right before this one so you can go read it no problem) I discussed my anticipation and mild nervousness about the whole thing. To clear up the suspense, it went very well. I'm alive, all the students from that year are still alive, my apartment is in one piece and so is my car (in a sense). Additionally, I now have a Masters in Education, an accomplishment I feel pretty darned good about.

I won't go into a full review of the past year but I'll try to hit some highlights. I found an apartment in a great location (no pets, sadly). I found a contra dance group and have been attending regularly (no dates, however). I taught half the total class load of my mentor teacher (who now has another intern this year) and have a huge advantage over most new teachers this year. I had a birthday (unremarkable, actually) and my sister got engaged. Towards the end, I graduated with the masters, spent June catsitting (read: being lazy and watching my friend's Netflix), got a new car in July (the old one went back to my parents and is still in one piece as far as I know (the new one is blue btw)), and have spent August preparing to teach (and getting in touch with an old friend from high school marching band).

On that note, today was supposed to be the first day of school. It was cancelled due to significant storm damage from a highly severe thunderstorm that hit Louisville on Saturday. I figured tomorrow would be the first and made my preparations accordingly and then they cancelled tomorrow as well (apparently some schools are still without phone and internet). So who knows when the first day will be. For that matter, who knows when my first year will be?

I spent all of last year in the classroom as a student teacher. Of the 12 classes we had, I taught six of them and helped in the other six. I didn't think it'd be that big of a deal until I attended New Teacher Induction and found myself bored as many of the actual new (first year) teachers knew very little of what I and my cohort knew. This made the whole process rather boring, but we got free lunch out of it, so that was nice (still no dates). With this in mind, I don't really consider this my first year. On the other hand, last year I didn't have the same responsibility as I do now and I had the luxury of only teaching half the classes and I had someone else in the room in case something happened and I didn't know what to do next. Given that, this is definitely my first year and there are many things I will learn trial by fire.

Whether this is my first year or not, I expect to be better prepared than most new teachers and will still have a harder time that I thought I would, come the end of the year. I will be teaching chemistry, or what passes for chemistry in my school district so in some ways, this year is the year that finally sees my original life-goal realized: to become a high school chemistry teacher, which raises up a bigger question that what I posed above. Now that I've made it, do I stay here or do I get a new goal and work toward that? Or, more accurately, how long will I stay here as a high school chemistry teacher, satisfied that I met my goal, before I go running for a new one?

That's the real question. Well, that and when am I going to get a date?