And back to work I go!

Well, I am enjoying a very lazy Sunday after quite a busy August!  It began with a week long course all about preparing to teach the third and fourth grades this Fall.  A 3/4 combined class is a very new adventure for me as a teacher, so I'm a little anxious about it, but am also really looking forward to getting back to work!  The course was invaluable, so many resources and ideas... really got me excited for September!

Then, it was a week at Mr. Lock's family cottage, followed by a sudden last-minute trip to South Carolina for a week with my family.  My parents have decided to purchase a vacation home down there, they will have it in a rental pool for awhile as they are not yet at retirement age, but then they hope to become "snow birds" and spend a few months of each year down in sunny South Carolina!  We vacationed in Myrtle Beach our entire lives, so it feels like a second home.  I'm really excited that they found a gorgeous 3-bedroom condo down there, for such an amazing price (sorry for the real estate drop, Americans, but we sure benefited from it in this case!).

Then it was Quin's bachelorette party in down town Toronto, followed by a Saturday night of line dancing with Multi-Testing Mommy -- awesome weekend!

Now, it's a lazy Sunday and then tomorrow... I'm back in my school (finally!) as I begin to set up my classroom!  I have been working on compiling and organizing my resources and some new ideas for this upcoming school year, I'm so excited to get back at it!  I love my job so very much, and while I appreciate the break so I can refresh, recharge, and prepare for a new grade to teach (well, two new grades... and dealing with it being a split class), I do love being back with the kids and taking them on their educational journey.

Obviously if you follow Ontario politics, you might realize that things are getting quite heated between Ontario Teachers and the Provincial Government right now, as our collective agreements are expiring and our premier would like to completely take away our right to collective bargain with our local school boards... however, I'm not focusing on that and will most likely not blog much about it.  Frankly, I am proud to be an Ontario educator, proud of the effort I put in to this job, and as a fairly new teacher I'm not as well-versed with all the politics of the job.  Right now, I'm focusing more on preparing for an amazing year for my next batch of students, and I am just eager and excited to get back in, start setting up, collaborate with my co-workers, and then dive in to a new school year on September 4th.  It might turn out to be a bit of a different year, if contract negotiations continue to be a big issue (which I'm sure they will), but while I am supportive of my union, I am mostly planning on just doing the best I can through it for my kids.

No matter your opinion on teachers, as I've been learning by reading comments on Toronto Star articles lately that so many people absolutely despise Teachers -- nameless entities that they treat as "others", as "greedy", well... I know that all the teachers I know and work with mostly just want to do our best job for our students.  So don't listen to all the garbage you hear in the news, is pretty much what I'm trying to get at. There is a lot being said by the Government about Teachers right now that is completely fabricated and ridiculous, just sayin'.  We are definitely the ones putting students first, no matter what the Liberals would like the public to believe.

ANYWAY, I am SO excited for "back to school"!  I wonder how the kids are feeling?!  HAHA!