Counting My Blessings

This post is really for me.  It is probably more of a journal entry than a blog post.  I am writing it because I really believe in the power of positive thinking.  But, like many of us, I find myself dwelling on the negative from time to time.  Sometimes, it is in the form of problem solving, and that to me is okay short term, but sometimes I let it drag me down, and I have enough stuff in my life to drag me down these days.  So, in an effort to count my blessings I decided to write this.

Last time I taught, I felt like I became jaded by the paperwork, meetings, parents in denial, but mostly all the time spent doing everything but teaching and planning (like making floats for the Christmas parade, lettering 500 certificates and meeting after meeting).  I found it frustrating enough that when my daughter was born I quit my job to be a mom, and never really looked back.  I taught part time in private settings, which was truly the perfect situation for me.  There was little or no paperwork, no grades, and art enrichment meant anyone taking my classes wanted to be there.   I have attempted, over the past three years to get a full time job, but never felt too sad when nothing came of it, and I kept my part time preschool art jobs and my job teaching adults at a local college.  And then my life changed.  

I have been at my new job for about 3 months and I have to say, that old feeling is creeping in again.......already.  While many of the kids are cute and sweet, many of them are not. Sadly, I find myself spending 75% of my time on the "bad kids" and 25% on the good ones.  I teach 600 students, and in most of my classes I can only tell you the names of the "troublemakers".  It is sad to me.  It is really beyond sad to me.  I thought I'd be able I make a big difference and many days I just feel like I've been run over by a truck.

So in an effort to count my blessings, have an attitude of gratitude, and look on the bright side here is the following.......

What I do like about my job:

• I get to go to work and draw and color and create.
• Teaching children to be creative; that there is not one solution, one answer, one "right way".  I love that. 
• Teaching children to be creative problem solvers, to think "outside the box" so to speak.  To me this is the most important thing they can learn in my classroom.
• Sweet children who come into the room and hug me or see me in the hallway and are overcome with excitement
• Children experiencing a sense of wonder when their painty brush makes the water swirl with color.  
• The fact that they say exactly what they think, without any thought for polite conversation.... ("Mrs. Morris what happened to your make up?",  "Mrs. Morris you're kinda tall for a lady.  Ya, tall and too skinny.", "You look bad, you need to get a sub and go home and go back to bed!",  "What's wrong with you, you sick or something?" -- in that instance I just hadn't worn make up to work!). Funny, right?
• My walkers.  I walk the walkers (31 of them!) after school from our school past the middle school to the crossing guard.  I like that I get to talk to these kids.  Some days they teach me a little teensy bits of Spanish as we walk, or I can talk to them about important things that in some cases no one else is talking to them about.  Things like the importance of making good friends, or doing your work, or working hard for something you want.  This part of my job is probably the closest to my heart.  Even more than in my classroom, I feel like I can make such a positive impact on these kids.  Last week, one my my 5th grade boys looked at another kid, motioned to me and said (thinking I was out of ear shot), "That art teacher, she's pretty cool, don't you think".
• Watching kids discover they can do things they didn't think they could.  That is pretty broad statement and it is seemingly small....they can draw an oval they thought they couldn't.....or paint in a way they thought was too hard, or figure out "over, under, over, under" and complete a paper weaving.  But, my hope is that it translates into something bigger.  Not even on a cognitive level.  Just instilling a little nugget of hope within them. The belief that they can do things that seem hard, and conquer them.  That is huge in life.  HUGE.
• The privilege of observing a thought in process.  As an art teacher I have become an witness of the creative process and I love it.  I love to watch them pause with the brush in the air deciding where the next brushstroke will go, or pausing over a big bin of pastels looking for just the right color, grabbing one, and then dropping in back in favor of another.  It is like watching a brain at work.  It is special to me.
• Hearing one of my younger students exclaim, "I'm an artist".  Or even better, saying to another student, "You are an artist!".
• If I forget to pack a lunch, there is an on site cafeteria. (I say this only because this happened today and the spaghetti and meatballs tasted so very good!)
• The little girls love my  hair.  Someone says it almost everyday.  "Mrs. Morris I love your hair.  It is so pretty". 
• On a personal level, I enjoy the creativity and inspiration that goes into planning a great lesson.  And how I can be stuck and staring at the computer and "pop" there it is. 
• Co-workers who are caring and empathetic and all around genuinely nice people, and funny too. 
• But most importantly, what makes my job wonderful, even if it had none of the stuff listed above is that it provides me the maximum possible time a working, single mom can have with her kids.  I get home 10 minutes after them, I have almost all the same days off, I will be with them every day of winter break, almost every day of summer break, and they don't have to go to after school care until 6 pm.  And in a time of great pain and change, I think this is the best thing about my job.  It has an impact on their lives, but it is minimal.  For that I am grateful beyond words.

So there it is.  Like in so many things in life it is the little things -- a paint brush suspended, an ah-ha moment, a small kindness.  I also notice I wrote the word love a lot.  How many people can say that about any aspects of their work?   And while I also think my job is frustrating sometimes, and there are days I want to pull out my hair, and there have been days that I have cried (during class), when I look at this list my heart feels so full and glad and lucky.