Week of Reality is Here

What is a reality check? It is finding and planning what I can do with what I have as resources this year. It often involves setting priorities with my time and money. Every year seems to have a bit of different circumstance for our family. Change has come as children join the family and as they grow older and change interests, jobs change from time to time, important people in our lives move in and out and sometimes back in again and the focus of what is most important at a given point are sometimes slightly altered as we grow more mature and are presented with varying life challenges.

I think that with Election Day looming this week I may have to face a reality check of sorts with how I am going to make decisions based on who has the power in my country and state. As there have been some irresponsible decisions made on the part of a couple of the federal and state level representatives, I have to plan more conservatively for the months ahead regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's elections.

Now back to this week's checklist which includes these tasks for today;
( ) Getting my Christmas letter written (I have the paper already)
( ) Updating my Christmas card list and writing and addressing one fifth of the cards (yes I have the cards, but still need to buy my stamps as soon as I get the number of Christmas cards count)
( ) Creating my Christmas list and starting the gift idea planners for those on my list
( ) Read the "Simplify Your Holidays" article
( ) Change the batteries in smoke detectors
( ) Pack up all the Halloween decorations and extras

Shaking Things Up

I have big decisions to make over the next month or so. In my teaching job I work with a team of teachers. The main part of our team includes three core teachers. I teach Math and Science and the other teachers teach Literature, Language Arts, Social Studies and one class of Science. I love my team, but one of the teachers on my team will need to move up to 7th grade Social Studies next year as the teacher now teaching 7th grade is retiring this year. The nice part is that my co-teacher will have job security as she will be highly qualified in her new position. She has been teaching 6th grade Social Studies for 15 years, but is not considered highly qualified. The other teacher on my team is a long term sub that has been at the job since the end of the first quarter. She did some long term subbing on my team last year as well. At this point I am not sure whether she will be back next year, but she is applying for the position full time.

So here is my dilemma. Do I continue teaching Math and Science? I love them both but they are not easy to teach as in Math there are tons of assignments to grade each week. Science is something kids enjoy, but the state of Kansas keeps changing the curriculum. I have had to change what I teach each year in science. A couple of times changes were made in the course of a year. Very aggravating. This year I am required to focus on Physical Science for most of the year. I miss teaching life science and Earth and space science, as I did when I taught general science. So do I keep teaching what I am teaching now, or do I take the opportunity to move over and teach Social Studies and Language Arts? Or Literature? All subjects I really love and kids usually enjoy learning about. I am highly qualified to teach them all.

Well, I need to decide soon as my principal will want to advertise for a teacher for next year soon. I want to stay in my school, but there are also open positions at the elementary level teaching. The elementary classes will be moving into a brand new school sometime next year (probably in January).

Whatever I do, or don't do, things are going to be different next year. Next year at the Middle School I will be the senior member of my team and will miss my friend and team leader whom next year I will only see in passing since she will be on another floor in my building with different plan times, etc. What to do? I wish I knew.