Not much more than a year ago, I found myself sitting over dinner with a close friend telling her how unsettled I felt at my job, my 19th year at the same school teaching bilingual children. Post-COVID classroom teaching just didn't feel like a good fit for me anymore. My biggest struggle? The noise.
After a year with about half the kids in school and half the kids joining online from home, the year they filled the school with everyone again brought with it a very loud atmosphere. Especially when they saw the COVID numbers start to go up again, so they brought back all the plastic shields. Those plastic shields made kids feel caged, and then when they wanted to be heard, they had to yell. I found myself hyper-sensitive to the noise levels and just knew I needed to find a quieter atmosphere to work in for my own mental sanity.
My friend suggested I look into other teaching positions where I could just work with small groups, so I immediately started looking into a bunch of positions opening where I could do that. But over Christmas break, I also felt compelled to update my resume and emphasize my ministry experience and education.
Now here I am a year later, closing up my quietest semester ever where I taught virtually, to one student, from an incredibly peaceful location at New Song Mission. While my past coworkers and colleagues sorted through MAP scores and are working through the Science of Reading Academy all year, I spent my time in a classroom with a fireplace, immersing myself in online leadership seminars, listening to speakers talk about biblical leadership, and developing a curriculum to teach our incoming students how to be leaders. I also got to create my very own Spanish curriculum to give my students a taste for the Spanish language, food, and culture.
I worked with an amazing teammate who can be just as quiet as me and who I can really talk to and connect with on a deep, spiritual level. We decorated our classroom together with a travel the world/multicultural theme, and we team-taught our one student virtually while praying faithfully for new houseparents to complete our team so God could fill our classroom. We also pulled off a Mom's retreat together to serve and minister to the moms of many of our campers and of our incoming students. We make a really good team together, and I'm so thankful for how God answered my prayers in bringing her to New Song. November scattered our whole New Song team in different places, but by the time we all came back together, God also answered our prayers by bringing new houseparents for the boys' home. They've been here for two weeks now, getting settled, and we already love them. It's very obvious that God is the one putting this team together.
I didn't technically start until August 1st, but Mike wanted to get to Indiana as early in July as possible because that's when his brother needed him the most to help with the business. And Bob said I was welcome to check out the camps going on because that's where most of our students come from. I was able to be very present during the last week of camp, and the day the campers came, I connected with a ten year old boy named Kayden over a cornhole game--the whole time thinking, "Maybe he'll be one of my students."
I'm happy to tell you that Kayden will be coming to campus as one of our five students this January. In fact, four of the students are coming from that last week of camp, and the fifth student is Jaylen, my virtual student, the only returning student from last year. We will have one second grader, two third graders, and two fifth graders--and we are more than ready for them. I'm sure we'll have some challenges and friction ahead, but I sure was happy to end my last virtual class with Jaylen and tell him that I'd see him IN PERSON after his break.
With our houseparents on campus, we went through several trainings together this week, and then we ended the week and semester with an invitation to have a hot lunch all together with Nikky and Jacob, the new houseparents, in the boys' home where they now reside. I can't think of a better way to bring the first semester to a close and usher in Christmas break.
I wish I could say I have a restful, quiet break planned for the next two weeks, but not so much. David has two doctor appointments, the house still needs extensive work (which hopefully means I'll be able to continue painting), I'm not done Christmas shopping yet, and I'm far behind on a writing project I committed to over a year ago. And we hope to travel to Warsaw for a day or two at some point to celebrate Christmas with Mike's mom and his younger brother.
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