So I am jumping on this bandwagon! I am not usually a fad follower, but I am seeing all over places like Instagram and fellow teacher blogs, posts about the importance of taking care of yourself, and I am all in. This is going to be my Self Care Summer.

This past school year was the toughest one yet. It is the first time I had legitimate first-hand struggle with burn out! I feel like teaching is my calling and my passion, but this year really tested me and I was ready to walk away from it all and do ANYTHING ELSE! I had SPED admin who were non-existent; I had specialists who were out of compliance and just plain stopped giving my students their services; I had some paras that were coming to school more for the social interaction with each other and had incredibly bad attitudes about actually working with the students; I had the most aggressive group of students ever collected in one classroom; and, I had more than my share of crazy, unreasonable parents (and their lawyers)! I walked out of one meeting feeling like I just plain hated people!!!

SO back to the self care. With the bruises finally fading and my headache subsiding, I have already made some positive moves in the direction of preserving my sanity! I left my last school. Facing another year with the same team of specialists, paras, admin and students, with an ever increasing work load and decreasing preps during the week (I had none this past year, and this next year my students’ staggered school day was changing so I was losing my ‘lunch break’) seemed like the very definition of crazy!!!

Today is MOVING DAY!! I have already packed up my old classroom, said good-bye to the few people I cared enough or respected enough to, and with the endless support from my family I am moving on to a new SPED classroom!

But moving on is only one of the steps I am taking to re-fill my “giving-a-shit” account! My summers are usually spent on classroom prep: cutting, laminating, and cutting again; reading and learning new techniques to better support my students; or surfing TPT and Pinterest for new classroom resources. I am sure some of this summer will be spent on that too, I do have an entirely new curriculum to learn, but this year I am also spending part of everyday doing something I love! Something just for me, that makes me feel better, and something I love doing with my family.  It is only July 3rd, and I am already feeling more human!!!!!

So fellow teachers, I encourage you to drink your coffee while it’s hot, your wine while it’s cold, and pamper yourself! The school year is looooooooooong, and the summer is short. Enjoy it while it lasts!! Summer is when we collect our overtime, but that does not mean we need to spend it working!