Last week was picture day here at Dale Junior high. When I was in elementary school, my mom made sure I looked at like halfway decent for my pictures, since she demanded I order them each and every year.
By middle school, I stopped caring, and subsequently my yearbook pictures from 6th to 12th grade were absolutely terrible.
My college ID cards at UCSD and CSUF weren’t much better either.
As an educator now, I do value picture day a little bit more, cognizant of the fact that I’ll be looking at many of these pictures for many years to come.
My 9th year of teaching and my 3rd year of teaching at Dale of course will be overshadowed by the black eye that inconveniently occurred on the same week of picture day. I guess it makes the year unique.
Hopefully it’s not foreshadowing of a eminent year full of terror and chaos. So far I’m getting much more comfortable in special education, learning step by step the process of creating and implementing an effective individualized education plan. Still, the paperwork takes me away from what I really want to do, which is to simply teach. I did do my first IEP meeting today, which was a great success.
Still, it didn’t really show up in the picture, or at least from what I can tell cause it’s so small on the ID badge. Hopefully it’s not obvious in the yearbook.
