Working in education must be the strangest phenomenon ever.  I have spent the last week wishing and being wished a "Happy New Year."  Now, anyone with half a brain probably just glanced at the calendar to make sure that this *is* still August and you haven't missed 5 months of life.  (Those of you with a whole brain already knew that it was August.)  So what is this new year?  The new school year, of course.  Teachers (and often students) also think of years in terms of school years.  Most of you probably count "another year" from January to December.  Personally, when I talk about the next year I'm generally referring to the time from August to July.

Wierd, right?

Anyway, my new year is about to start.  Things are a little easier as this is the second year, but my state has adopted a new policy that requires students to recieve a certain amount of reading instruction per day.  Guess which lucky person drew the short straw and gets to put in extra time to make it work?  I'm sooo happy this isn't my first year.  I can't imagine trying to do everything from scratch and trying to make this new reading program work.

Good bye all, see you next December, when I surface and breathe again.  And if not then, definitely in June.

This nonsense has not slowed down enough for me.  But I am happy to say that I'm slowly beginning to get the hang of things which is why I suddenly have the pleasure of taking today off.

Only 5 months to go and I'm done with my first year!