We've just completed our first full week. People ask me, "How's school?" and I reply, "So far, so good," but that isn't accurate. It's only just begun, and I really don't know. The sixth graders, they're still in the "honeymoon state." They don't quite know what to expect of us yet, so they're still behaving pretty well overall. (I did have to have a "talk" with one today, and since the sixth graders are still rather scared of me now, it's better to nip things in the bud right away.) All I know is true is that I can hope for a really great year. I know I'm going to have it in two classes (seventh and eighth), so, as Meatloaf sang, "Two out three ain't bad."

When my great-aunt Kit died, I found this book in her house entitled A Search for Self-Discovery THE FRIEND IN YOUR MIRROR by Edward Cunningham, and I keep this book at school. Today, after the final bell rang, I pulled it out, and this particular piece caught my attention:
Speak honestly to yourself
of people you knew,
Recalling the kind ones
who taught you lessons in love,
The thoughtless ones
who made you feel the bitterness
Of their own self-doubt...
and the very human ones
Who may have done both.

Leaf back
through the album of time.....
What portraits stand out
in sharpest detail?
Whose faces can you see
most vividly?
Whose voices can you her
most clearly?

Re-enter tht world you shared
and see them all
As they appeared to you then...

When the years go by, what will my students remember about me? Will I show them that I'm human and have them remember the good and the bad? Will they remember the crazy antics I invent to try to help them memorize different things, or the way I bang my head on the board if I continue to get wrong answers over something I KNOW they should know? Will it be the funny times, singing on the bus, on overnight field trips, or the "eagle eye" I give them when I mean business? Last year I had a student state on his blog, "Sometimes she makes me want to pull my hair out, but other times I don't want to leave her class."

That's a good way to be remembered.