The Beginning

For the last 3 years, I have been teaching at East Chicago Lighthouse Charter School in East Chicago, Indiana. To say that it's been quite an experience would be the understatement of all understatements. I have laughed, sobbed tears of joy and frustration, and shouted in anger, relief and elation. I have learned about tough love, unconditional love, pushing students to dream big about college and careers, and I've learned that sometimes you just have to let kids be kids.

During my teaching years, I consistently updated my facebook status to capture the funniest and most heartwarming moments in my classroom. Eventually, I had a faithful following of friends who loved the posts and wanted to hear the full stories behind them. Countless people suggested, "Oh, you should keep a blog!" or "You should write a book!" And all I would ever think is "Uh-huh, yeah, I'd buy that book. It would be hilarious because I have the best kids ever. But when am I going to write it? I work 60 hours a week!"

But lo and behold, my teaching career has come to an end. As I type, I'm sitting in my very strangely empty and lifeless classroom. Surely there should be artwork on the walls, crayons and pencils scattered on the floor, children talking far too loudly, and Naiome walking around even though I told her 2.7 seconds ago to sit in her chair. Instead, I've packed up all of my teaching materials, which now sit in boxes in my car. I've cleaned out all the desks and stacked up the chairs. I've boxed up the classroom library, math manipulatives, and art supplies and placed everything on permanent shelves. Sky blue butcher paper neatly covers these materials so the soot from the East Chicago air doesn't settle on top of them this summer. This room needs a massive scouring and lots of love from a future teacher. But more than that, it needs the sound of children's laughter and musical voices. It needs learning, action, and excitement.

But I digress. I find myself staring at 2 weeks off before starting my new job (not a teaching job...who am I if I'm not Ms. Foley?). I find myself reminiscing about my experiences here and wishing I'd kept a blog all along. I know that I won't be able to write a book anytime in the near future. What I do know is I can commit to documenting my stories one by one. In this blog, I will be reflecting on my teaching career and writing the full stories for as many of the heartwarming (and not-so-heartwarming) moments as I can remember. I'm hoping that writing them all down will jog my memory and surface the moments I can't seem to remember now. I'm also hoping that this blog will make writing my book a heck of a lot easier some day.

I'm a bit OCD, and I also strongly dislike the word "hate." So, I strongly dislike that this blog may be out of chronological order. I'm going to skip around and write the stories as I remember them, so please forgive me for that. Feel free to leave me your honest (and polite) feedback.  My hope it that these stories will bring you laughter and give you a window into the life I've lived for the last 3 years with the most incredible children I've ever known.

And now, as I've signed every morning message to my students for 3 years:

Love,
Ms. Foley