My Word for 2013

I’m jumping on the bandwagon.  No resolutions for me this year.  Instead I’m going with a word for the year.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the next couple of years.  Where my family will be and where my WeeMan will be.

This has been a tough year for me at school.  I love being back in my own classroom, but my class definitely has some issues.  I come home a lot of nights tired, aching, grumpy, despairing, and hopeless.  Day to day I’ve let my joy get sucked out by the stupid things.  The things that in the end won’t matter.  So I’ve decided it’s time to turn that around.  It’s time to make a change.  For me, for my family, and for my kiddos.

All that being said my word for 2013 is “SHINE”.  I’m going to start shining His light at school everyday – even on those gloomy, naughty, tired, grumpy days.  I’m going to shine for my kids and for my family.  I need to be that example to my WeeMan and to my class.

WeeMan has another year of preschool and then it will be time for kindergarten and public school.  Hubby and I have done the homeschooling discussion dance. When WeeMan was born – my stance was we either had to move or I would need to homeschool him.  You see I live in the school district I teach.  My school is considered the worst by most of the people in our county.  Many of my kids have home lives you would expect in a larger city.  Our Free and Reduced lunch students are around 85% of our school population of around 500.  Our kids use words I hope to never hear my WeeMan say.  They have experienced things no child should ever have to live through and for some of them that is the only life they have ever known.  So the overprotective mom in me planned to keep my baby away from all that.  But sometime in the past year I have felt my heart change.  I’ve looked around my neighborhood and my classroom and I’ve realized I need to send my WeeMan to my school.  I need him to see the life other kids live, but most of all I need to send him in to the classroom and know that he’s going in there as a Light – that he can shine and maybe make a difference for some of the kids in his class.

So to wrap up my rambling – I’m going to start working on shining now.  I need to give WeeMan the example I want him to live.  I need to stop letting life beat me down and dim the light.

Part of my morning prayer for 2013 is that God allow me to Shine in the darkness of some of my kids lives.  I may never known that it mattered, I may never see the results – but I need to believe that it just might make a difference for some.

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times – when one only remembers to turn on the light” Albus Dumbledore Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban