First Class Nerves

I have waaaaaay too much swirling around in my mind & heart tonight. Observation & evaluation tomorrow morning, first thing... that one's consuming all my mental powers right now, but I have a few other long-term thorns in the flesh as well. I sure did need this past weekend in Nashville. It was nice to get completely and totally away from everything, and for a while rest my brain from thinking about school and friends and problems.

I'm teaching the lesson tomorrow morning on an election theme -- the media and public opinion polls. I've got a few more things I need to print out, but I could easily overkill this. I could teach an entire course on this, but I have to condense it to a low high-school level and make it interesting for them.

There's just too much in my head. I need some mental and emotional relief. It would be great if school were all I had to think about, though -- I like school very much and I feel like I belong there. The crowd is a rough one; only a tiny percentage of my students are from intact two-parent homes. A great many of them have parents, brothers, sisters, or other relatives in prison. Drugs, gangs, sex... it's everywhere and it's in your face. Few of them know how to submit to anyone's authority, how to trust an adult, how to speak respectfully. It's strange to say this, but it's a relief to be there and dealing with it, truthfully. It's a completely new world, away from the heart issues that strangle me and keep peace far away. At school, it's just raw and real and blunt and THERE. I'm not soaking in lies and deception, in false spirituality, in anger or in fear. I feel at peace amidst them; they don't really know me or have pre-conceived notions of who I am, so I have the opportunity to be exactly who I really am.

I really, really, really want to do a good job there. I want to do it right. I want my administrators to respect me and trust me. I want my students to succeed. I want to feel comfortable knowing I did the job that the public expects of me. I feel keenly responsible and too small for the task. Just too much in my head.