It's official!

I have felt the little one move a few times now. At first I was in denial and thought it wasn't humanly possible to feel the baby this early yet, but after a few days of it, I am now convinced that we have a little Olympic athlete growing inside.

I always said that after I had Noelle, what I missed the most about being pregnant was feeling her kick and move. I didn't feel Noelle move until well after my 20th week of pregnancy. To feel it already at 12-13 weeks, I feel blessed! I am so excited to be on this journey again and am ready for everything that is to come.

Other than that, there really isn't much to talk about. I am anxiously awaiting the end of school with less than 4 weeks to go now. I am SO ready for a break and to rest my mind and body for a little bit.

OK-- I guess there is something else to talk about. I don't want to open a can of worms, but since this is my blog, I feel that I have permission-- but lately on Facebook there have been not just one, but several, of my friends posting about how teachers (I'm paraphrasing) are whiners and need to just shut up or quit. Someone put a picture up of an extremely outdated letter from 1994 where a teacher was reprimanding a student for correcting her (albeit in a disrespectful way) because she was wrong in something she told the class. This inspired a lot of hateful comments about how this is what's wrong with schools TODAY (Hello...1994...) and why they chose to homeschool their children because teachers "don't know what the Hell they are teaching."

I wanted to comment so badly on those posts and really lay it out there, but the general consensus I was gathering was that really no one would see it from my point of view. After all, I have a very easy job where all I do is babysit and get to leave at 3:00 and get summers, spring breaks, Christmas breaks, random 3 day weekends, 2 hour delays, snow days, etc. Who would want to hear about how I actually do work extremely hard, all through the year, whether I am in my classroom or not. That I spend COUNTLESS hours and dollars of my own money on my students, classroom, lessons, etc. My day does not end when I walk out of school (typically never at 3:00, usually closer to 5:00 which is when most "normal" people leave their jobs). I lug home a bag of papers to grade each night and have the internal struggle of do I miss out on time with my child and/or my husband to grade these things (that will most likely end up shoved in a child's backpack never to be seen by the parent anyway) or should I just wait until tomorrow.

I don't really need to mention how difficult it is to deal with parents who think you're the enemy, students who are apathetic, students who struggle no matter how hard to try to help them, new demands from the state which includes a grand total of about 3 whole school weeks of ISTEP testing, plus an additional 4 weeks per year of Acuity testing (which is basically like an ISTEP, but doesn't "count" against you in the state's eyes), which leaves very little time to get material taught in a way that is meaningful to the students.

Let's not forget about how now with the new teacher effectiveness model, if even one of my 25 students does not show "growth" from the previous year's ISTEP test, (which is all that shows a student has grown, right?), I automatically cannot receive a highly effective rating, and because of that, I may not ever make more than what I make right now, which, in case you were wondering, isn't a whole lot. Because I didn't start my masters by last summer, I no longer have the chance to earn it and be paid accordingly for my extra education. Therefore, there's no incentive to learn more and get a masters degree, but yet I still have to renew my license every 5 years by taking college classes and/or doing other requirements.

I have never, ever wanted anyone to feel sorry for me in the profession I chose and for the most part, enjoy. However, I would have expected a little more respect for the work that I (and my teaching colleagues) do, and a little less resentment over the summer break that I do feel I have earned. If we need to stop complaining or quit...then I would invite the haters to stop hating or get your teacher's license.