No More Nervous Eye Twitches For Me

This time last year, I was as busy as a bee with the kids singing in the holiday program, the Christmas party, Santa's workshop (arts/crafts day). All the activity and constant noise contributed towards a kind of happy stress--the kids were super excited, and I was too.

It's been harder to get into that kind of a Christmas spirit at my new job. I don't have an actual classroom to decorate, no kids to constantly calm down/manage/supervise. No random student gifts to open....

Instead, I've been student-less these past two days. I have a policy of not pulling my kids out of their classrooms during parties/special activities (thankfully, the general ed teachers are in total agreement--or at least they pretend to be anyway). So I've had a lot of "free" time to catch up on paperwork, hold meetings, plan ahead and create materials. It's been such a bizarre change of pace. It's weird not feeling totally and completely drained and exhausted the Friday before a break.

I do miss that feeling of happy-stress, though. But when I start to look longingly at the classrooms full of excitement, chaos, and hyper-happy children, all I need to do is take one look at the teacher. Then I feel thankful that I don't look like I'm about to have a nervous breakdown.