Hitting My Stride?!

I've been meaning to post something about teaching for quite a few weeks now, and something always arises to prevent it. But tonight, I decided to set a timer for fifteen minutes and blog for just a little bit. For those of you who had to listen to me complain first semester about all my struggles with teaching, I wish you were here now. I am LOVING teaching. I don't know what changed or really when it changed, but sometime around the end of February I found myself smiling at the end of the day as I surveyed the piles of student work or my desk piled with research for my lesson plans. I found myself relishing the time in the classroom and having a reputation for being crazy and passionate about English Language Arts. And all I can do is praise God for helping me transform my time in the classroom into a form of worship of Him. Because I think that was the root cause of the change. It's so hard to put into words, but take yesterday for example. I looked around at my thirty-four students in my fourth block and I just felt as if I was going to burst with joy. Here I was, coaxing reluctant and sleepy fourteen through eighteen-year-old students to get excited about Arthur Miller's The Crucible and I was acting out stuff all dramatically and I realized....oh my goodness, I think I am finally hitting my stride as a teacher. The kids were smiling and actually looking at their text and I don't know, it was a cool moment for me. And I've been having moments like this almost every other day for the past couple weeks. Praise God, work isn't something I dread any longer!!! While Ciaran and I were on our way to the grocery store last night, I shared some of this with him and he was actually pretty surprised because he said it wasn't really until his second year of teaching that he really started to experience some of the things I described to him. And you know what, I really have to attribute this to the Lord. I was praying so hard about this all of January and in one of my times alone with Him, He reminded me that all work needs to be done for His glory and so I prayed that He would help transform my heart so my work would become a form of worship. And now, almost two months later, I'm starting to feel this a little. Praise God! All right, my time is up to write, I hope these jumbled thoughts make a bit of sense. If not, maybe I'll be able to carve a little bit of time out of my schedule tomorrow to post some more.