Fruits of our Labour

I am an optimistic woman.

I like to look on the bright side of things.

I am always focusing on the silver lining of ANY dark and stormy cloud.

And I will always be that one smiling on the subway when everyone else is scowling.

However...

After all this work that we did on Friday on co-operation, I am not convinced that I really saw the fruits of that labour in class today. This leads me to a couple of conclusions:

1) Building community, a team and a group of young people that work together takes WAY more time than 3 weeks. It is an ongoing process.
2) The entire class dynamic can be thrown off by one person being present or one person being absent. It is like baking cookies - if on Friday we had Baking soda present, we may make a perfect batch, but if on Monday, Baking Soda AND Vanilla are absent, the cookies will be very different and barely edible.
3) Teaching may just be the hardest job in the world.

My head is swimming with wrapping up my units, completing our culminating tasks, introducing culminating tasks, planning a future field trip and contributing to extra-curricular stuff. I sometimes feel like I am constantly thinking about work.

It suddenly makes sense to me why school is only 10 months a year - so teachers can actually NOT work. We are constantly planning planning planning. Or, at least I am.