Sweet Moments in the Midst of Chaos

  Well, Monday is October 1st.  That means I've made it through over a month of teaching. Whew!  The last month has had me through an emotional rollercoaster-- moments of joy, frustration, inspiration, and hope.  Each day I walk into my school with no clue what is going to happen.  I can come in with a very  thought out plan, and the next minute it's been turned completely upside down.  My mentor teacher mentioned to me the other day that a big part of being a Special Educator is using the "f word"-- flexibility!  That seems like an understatement!  I am in a school with some hard kids from hard backgrounds-- a lot of my kiddos have been through way more stuff than I could even fathom, and I completely admire their bravery and strength and perseverance.  Even though I have days where I wonder what the heck is going on, I have so many joyful moments with kids and I feel so privileged and honored when I have the opportunity to speak words of love and affirmation into kids.
  This week, I felt like God provided so many awesome opportunities for me to love on them.  Because the special education office is right next to the room where the kids with referrals come (i.e. kids that are really misbehaving in class), sometimes I end up being the adult supervisor with the kiddos.  Earlier this week, a little 1st grade girl came into the room, screaming and crying her eyes out.  I told her to take a few deep breaths.  Still screaming and crying.  I told her to sit down for a minute.  Still screaming and crying.  What else should I do?  Okay, here it goes, I'm going to try to sing to her... I sure hope no one walks in right now to hear my horrible voice.  I start singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."  Crying stops immediately.  I was like, what the heck just happened?  It was amazing.  And then, this sweet little smile came onto her face, and we started to calm down, and I asked her to explain to me why she was sent to the office and what we were going to do differently next time.  Such a sweet moment with this young girl.
  I have another student in my morning reading class that has a disorder that causes him to yell out frequently.  It is really distracting to my class sometimes, but God has really allowed me to pull out the strengths this child has and recognize the beautiful things that make up this little class clown.  This student has such a gift for making other people laugh, even though sometimes as a teacher, it makes me crazy because I don't need any kids egging him on to keep doing it!  But bringing laughter to people is such a wonderful gift!!  He also has such a gift for advocating for his needs.  I ask him frequently what kinds of things we need to do to help him with the yelling out.  I make charts for him, goal sheets, give him breaks during class, time him, etc.  On Friday he came up to me and said, "oh yeah, Miss, I forgot to tell you about a chart that would really help me."  He sat down with me and helped me draw out the chart and showed me how it would work for him.  Then he said, "If you could remember to do that on Monday, that would really help me."  What a great skill that this child has already developed to advocate for his special needs!!  That's my hope for every student that has special needs-- that they would understand what they need in the classroom to be successful, and have the courage to ask for it.
  And last, but not least, I had a student that came to me after class crying on Friday.  She told me that other girls told her no one wants to be her partner because she's not smart and no one likes her.  It makes me so mad when kids bully their peers.  I remember being that little girl.  I remember being the victim of the bullying and how much it hurt.  I had such a privilege to sit with this young, sweet girl and give her a big hug and tell her I know how hard that must be and that the things those girls were telling her were lies.  She was smart, she was a kind and sweet young woman, and that is the truth.
  Even though I have days where I wonder what the heck I am doing and why I am teaching, if I just have 3 moments like this each week with kids, that is enough to affirm exactly why I am there-- to love kids-- to give them hope-- to believe in them.  I am honored to be in that school.  I have such a privilege to work with these kids, and it is such a privilege when they invite me into their lives.  I am so grateful, and know that these moments will carry me through.

Crazy Weeks!

Whew.  I've officially made it through the first two weeks of school.  I've always heard friends that are teachers tell me how exhausted they are at the end of their day, but I don't think I fully understood the type of exhaustion they were experiencing until I stepped into it myself-- it's a heart, mind, and soul job.      Daily I'm challenged in unique and different ways and I love it.  I would have to say though, so far my favorite part is the moments I get to have with kids.  When I get to walk down a hallway and hear about how their day has been, and when they dare to share a little piece of their life with me, those are the moments that I treasure the most.  Next week, I'll get to begin my services for kids with special needs, and I am beyond thrilled to start working with kiddos each day to build relationships and to help them access the tools that they need to access the general education curriculum.  I feel honored that God has asked me to step into this role and into this place, and even though some days even in the first few weeks have been beyond challenging, I know why I'm here and feel privileged to be able to speak truth and love into kids.  I can't say that every day is easy.  Sometimes kids like to test and challenge me in ways that I never expected, but I am thankful for new days, for fresh starts, and to learn and grow from the mistakes I make.

So, that's where I'm at.  Now that I'll actually begin my direct contact with kids on Tuesday, I'm sure I'm going to have a lot more stories!  The last few weeks have been testing, scheduling, working with gen ed teachers, trying to meet some of my students, and occasional teaching.  Now it's the real deal and I'm ready to roll! (Well, as ready as I can be...)


2 Weeks of Pre-Made Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner Made in a Day!
And now for the fun part, where I get to share with you crafty ideas, food fun, etc... with the last few weeks being hectic, I knew that I wasn't going to have a ton of time to cook some healthy and delicious food.  I also didn't want to resort to eating frozen meals every day because of all the extra preservatives, sodium, and I just never feel quite full after eating them.  So instead, I managed to find a few recipes that allowed me to make healthy breakfasts, lunches, and dinner that I could make with fresh ingredients, freeze, and then take out of the freezer whenever I was ready to go.  That's right, I made almost two weeks worth of meals (breakfast to dinner) in about a day of preparation that are healthy and delicious, and you can too!  So, here's how...

(My freezer...)

Dinner                   Lunch                Breakfast 

Breakfast

Most days for breakfast, I have some cereal or oatmeal, but sometimes there are just those days where I sleep a little later, move a little slower, and need something I can just run out the door with to eat.  I found this website that has pre-made, healthy egg mcmuffins-- you can use whole wheat english muffins, eggs (or egg whites), turkey sausage, and reduced-fat cheese for a pretty good breakfast sandwich that you can grab out of your freezer, heat in the microwave, and go!  

Lunch
For lunch, I found some recipes for pre-made wraps.  I found some Bean, Spinach, and Quinoa Burritos on the Real Simple website that I really like.  They are healthy, delicious, and you can just take them out of the freezer and reheat in the microwave.  (Directions for reheating are on both of these recipe websites).  I also made some barbeque chicken wraps.  I made the barbeque chicken with just three ingredients in a crockpot-- throw chicken, a bottle of barbeque sauce, and pineapples into a crockpot for about 6-7 hours on low (Recipe found here).  Once the chicken is cooked, I mixed it with some rice, and then just threw it onto a tortilla and made a few wraps out of it.  I then froze them and reheated them in the microwave for about 2 minutes.  Sometimes I even like eating them cold!  There are tons of other pre-made wraps you can make by just throwing some things together.  I think my next attempt will be a mexican style wrap, with black beans, onions, peppers, chili powder, rice, avocado, ground turkey breast, etc... once I try it out I'll be happy to share!

Dinner
So, last, but certainly not the least-- dinner!  Over the last year, I have really fallen in love with my crockpot.  I've found so many easy and healthy recipes to make and there is nothing better than coming home after work to your crockpot meal that is ready to eat and has the kitchen smelling like you've been cooking yummy things all day!  I found this link on Pinterest that has 28 dump chicken recipes .  Here is what I love about it: the recipes are super easy, very healthy, and most of the ingredients you probably already have!  The website gives instructions on how to make them freezer meals and how to reheat out of the freezer.  I found about 6 or 7 recipes that I really liked, and made them all freezer meals.  Now, whenever I want an easy dinner, I just need to take the freezer meal out of the freezer the night before, put it into the fridge to thaw, and the next morning, just toss it into the crockpot so that it's ready for dinner that night!  Easy enough, right??


So, I hope these recipes make your crazy weeks a little easy, and give you comfort that you're eating good and healthy meals even in the midst of craziness!!