This past Thursday was pretty much a disaster in my mind at school. I left school feeling so discouraged. See, I have this idea in my head that I can be an amazing teacher. I know how to make things fun and I absolutely LOVE investing in my students. But during this semester of student teaching, I have just completely felt unable to be creative and quite discouraged. My students have become very mean and disrespectful and it is beginning to have an effect on me wanting to teach 4th grade now! By the way, I love 4th grade so that's a big deal.
I had planned out what and how I was going to teach to my high math group. They are by far my favorite to teach just because they have an eagerness to learn and are quick to understand things. I rarely have to remind them to focus on the activity. All prepared….and then I got a bomb dropped on me. I am now apparently teaching the low group as well…..the behavior problem students and the *stare-into-space* ones. Frantically I tried to put together a lesson with a lot of manipulatives and find a way to help them learn their multiplication since they don't know it (why they are in the group). The days started out so well with my high group but when I would get to my low group, chaos would erupt. These kids are MEAN…and they whine, and they just don't care. What do I do?! I was so frustrated. My teacher had already yelled at me for not starting this group early enough and had changed plans on me so much. Now I just wanted to cry- and I almost did. The day only got worse for me. I would get yelled at several more times. One little child, a very deceitful and quite honestly a terror of a child, pitted me and my teacher against each other as well. And then adding to that was the disrespectful attitudes from many of the other students during the day. It seriously felt like the worst day of my life. I just wanted to go home and go hide under my covers.
The school day finally ended and I got home. Then I turned on my computer and went through my mental checklist of things to do online. One of those is to check this amazing tumblr called JesustotheWorld. This girl is wonderful and puts up the most encouraging pictures. I often save them to my desktop to look over later. They come quite in handy. As soon as I opened her tumblr, I noticed one major theme that seemed to jump out at me from the page. All her posts from the day (maybe several days) were about being strong…in the Lord. Well that hit me hard.
I started to calm myself down. I was realizing that wow…I am not as strong by myself as I would like to think. There are some days where I have it all together- or it at least seems like it. And then there are days like Thursday. The one picture that really stuck out to me was this one:
What a perfect picture for me to come upon. I completely broke down then. I was tired of trying to be strong during the day. What I really needed was to run straight to His lap and pour it all out. I needed some time soley focused on Him. I needed His comfort. I needed His truth.
I have bad days sometimes and so does everyone else. But isn't it a relieving feeling to know that God is there to comfort you on those bad days? That no matter what goes wrong, He will always be there for you to climb up into the safety of His arms.
Of course I did go back today. It was a better day and I enjoyed my students much more than I had yesterday. None of us are perfect. We all make mistakes. And next time I have a bad day….I'm going straight to Him again- because it's ok to feel broken. He will comfort you in your moments of weakness.
