Ms. Popularity, among 7 year-olds

My new class is growing on me, but I miss my little sweethearts from last year. At dismissal time each day, I can sometimes be annoyed by lots of little girls repeatedly yelling "Ms. Stephanie!" until I look over at the Grade 2 lines and wave hello or blow them a kiss. I also secretly love it...it's like a little heart squeeze to have previous students come up and hug me or say hello throughout the day. 

from AAG's Mother's Day celebration, 2012

Another September

There ought to be a classification like "Sweet 16," "AFC champions," or "Stanley Cup Finalists" for teachers who make it through the first month of school. Or the first two weeks. It could be based on a 1-10 rating of how much sleep a person got, how unscathed s/he looks, and how many students weren't lost. Actually, lost students would probably be cause for automatic elimination, but I digress. Working through the beginning of a school year is quite a prestigious feat that deserves a lot more attention than it gets. Just saying...

We're in it- another September here in Kuwait. This is the fifth school year here for Chris and myself, and it has started out as one of the craziest for me. The events of this September were not really all that extraordinary but the NUMBER of events and tasks that I've had to organize have been significantly more than in past years. Let me explain.

First, Grades 1-3 have moved into a new addition to my school, which is adjacent to the older building. It's a great place, with spacious classrooms and state-of-the-art technology, so I'm really privileged to have my classroom in it. The only hitch was that my assistant and I basically moved the entire contents of my old classroom into my new classroom by ourselves. Three days before students started. Needless to say, we were a little busy.

At the same time, I had the opportunity to oversee an outreach to teachers that we did through our church service. Since Chris was in the States later than I was, when I got back, I had to take over most of the responsibility for organizing the event and the preparation leading up to it. Now, I don't say that to make myself sound important at all. In fact, I feel like I struggled to survive through the last few days before the outreach, which happened to be days #3, #4, and #5 of school. Thankfully, Chris arrived on day #3 of school, so he could take over some of the phone calls and catch me as I collapsed into a heap at the end of days #4 and #5.

I'll write another post on the details of the outreach, which ended up going amazingly well. I know that God used it to get lots of teachers (new to Kuwait and others) connected to our service and other Christians in the country. And really, that was the point. For now, I'll get back to my school work and tidy up at the end of another Saturday.