Falter

Falter–to lose strength or momentum.

I’m trying not to falter.  I feel like no area of life has been perfect lately.

My library is a little too messy.  I’m a little too busy (shocker).  I work late to try to catch up.  I’m always behind on housework.  I was able to convince myself for a while “it’s because I just moved in” but now it’s a combination of no time and needing to invest in another couple of storage pieces so that I have a place for some of the things that are lying around.

I try not to doubt myself.  I don’t do everything right.  I know it’s important to never stop learning, but I’m still figuring it out.  I’ve had some really good moments and some where I have looked back and wondered, “How could this have gone differently?”  or “Was that really the right move?”

It’s a whirlwind.  I have one class and I barely have them out the door before the next group shows up.  It keeps me busy.  I try to carve out some time to accomplish some of the things that we need to get done… but it’s pretty impossible.  We worked on shifting the schedule around today.  The media para is going to take her kids into the science lab or upstairs computer lab every day.  This will give them more room to work.  I wish it was a little closer to the library, but hey we work with what we’ve got.

We got the keys to the room today and went up there to check out the layout.  The room already has a Promethean board hooked up.  I’m still waiting on mine–it should be installed Saturday (woot woot!).  I know she probably won’t need to use it a lot, but I’m glad that she has one in there.  I cut it on and showed her some of the basics.  I had always used Smart Boards before, but I have been very impressed with the features of the Promethean board.  One of the cool things about the ones we have is that the board has its own operating system.  Instead of having to hook up your computer, you can turn the board on and go from there, running off the operating system.  We can even plug in a USB drive and open files from the USB drive on the board.  I love the fact that it can be completely wire free.

When we were playing with the board, she was pretty impressed and said, “Wow, I know why you are so ready to get yours.”  If you have taught any class before with technology, you know it is SO hard to teach without it.  There’s been several things we have worked on this week that would have went SO much better if I had the board.  I have a projector and have thrown things up on the wall.  I had my littles color coding a worksheet and it would have been so helpful if I could have put the worksheet on the board and showed them exactly what to color on the board instead of walking around the room and pointing on their papers.  I’m too short to point at the wall.  

Tomorrow is a new day and there’s no choice but to keep rolling onwards… I might falter a little, but that’s to be expected I guess.