Sepia, affianced, and panacea: do you know how to pronounce all these words? Until today, when Grammar Girl’s newsletter shocked me into looking up the second in that list, I did not.
Despite this mildly distressing lack of confidence in my ability to pronounce seldom-used words, I feel cautiously confident about my teaching abilities going into my second year of teaching. I was overwhelmingly nervous last night, more so than I was before my first first day last year. Once I finally got to bed, though, I slept like a rock.
Overall, today went oddly smoothly. I was overplanned in a good way; what I didn’t do yesterday will either be thrown out because it wasn’t vital anyway or I’ll squish it into the rest of the week/unit somehow. I got all the way through the syllabus in every class, which was good since the syllabus agreement is all my students’ first homework assignment.
Tomorrow is another challenge. I intend to actually start teaching, by which I mean covering flash fiction and maybe some beginning grammar. I also have to collect everyone’s summer reading forms. (I don’t have to read them, and I don’t have to test them–thank goodness! That gave me such a headache last year, especially since I had to read the books before I felt comfortable grading their tests.) And I have to sell them the school-printed grammar book.
I can tell, though, that this year is going to be different. I can’t quite surmise whether that is because I’m at a different school, because I’m a different person than I was at this time last year, because these are different kids, or because life is always different from day to day. I’m in it to win it, though.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
–2 Timothy 4:7
