Surviving the Week After Break

Returning to school after a break is always a daunting task because in some ways it is like starting the school year all over again, except the students know who I am. Students (and this teacher too) seem to forget a lot during the time that they are away from school. It’s truly remarkable and someone should do some research on this, really.

Returning from Fall Break proved no exception to my previous experiences. Several of my students were not at all the students that left me before break, they behaved as they did the first week of school and I even had one student end up with their stick in the red cup. There has only been one student in the red cup all year, up until this point. Remarkable! We survived though and the students seem to be back, mostly, into the routine of things.

Over break I spent time struggling with myself and my thought life. I know that it sounds kind of crazy, but without going into a lot of detail I realized that there was much in my thought life that was contributing to a very poor attitude and joylessness. Ouch! It hurts to make that public. I acknowledged it before God and sought His help with it. He showed me two very tangible things that needed to do.

First, He began to show me how ungrateful I was and discontented. I acknowledged that I need to recognize the things in my life for which I can thank Him and there are certainly a lot. This week at work should have been stressful and discouraging for many reasons – go to Westvalleyview.com, click on Education, and read the article about ‘Gross Mismanagement’ – that I will not mention. However, I practiced that whole gratitude thing and boy did it work. The challenges that I encountered didn’t seem as bad and my whole demeanor was different. Praise be to God!

Second, the Lord began to show me that I waste His precisous time doing frivolous things, so I purposed to watch less televsion and spend the time instead reading and studying the word. Wow! What a difference that made. I didn’t watch a lot of television to begin with, but replacing even just an hour a night with reading the word proved to be so amazing. I even ended up spending most of my Friday night reading, while doing laundry, instead of watching a movie. Who would have thought!

So, the week after break proved to be very eventful and even challening, but God proved faithful in providing the grace I needed to successfully handle what came my way. I will continue my practice of finding things to be thankful for and replacing time spent watching television with reading and studying. Joy is being restored and my attitude is becoming a much more godly one. Praises be to God!

Advertisement