Every day may not be good...

For the last two days I have been subbing with my kiddos in grade 3 while my co-teacher runs parent-teacher conferences.  The first morning went really smoothly, and I felt like I was starting to use my own management style with my kids, and that they were responding to it.  (My co-teacher's management is quite different from mine!)  Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, my students started to push back, which led to some not-so-fun student interactions.
This afternoon, the last period didn't go smoothly.  They were assigned some independent work which required a lot of focus (copying something down into their journals) but we had folks running all around and the noise level was getting out of control.  I had to hold a few kids behind for a few minutes before they went to their Exploratories so that we could have a conversation about attention and listening, and it was such a sour note to end my day on.  I hate when the last period is eventful and I hate sending my kids home on a less-than-positive note and I hate when I have to be "mean" or give a "lecture."  When this is how my day wraps up, for the rest of the afternoon, I am tired and defeated; the energy I usually draw from being with my students has instead been sapped out of me by these frustrating moments.
I was in the middle of writing a post similar to this (maybe a bit more whiny!) on my more personal blog, and began writing about how this exhaustion was going to make it hard to motivate myself to go to Korean class tonight.  That led me to reflect on earlier today when I told my students about my Korean classes.  I practiced my vocab words with them and they laughed and laughed.  The memory made me smile, as I thought of their sweet giggles behind their hands at my limited knowledge and iffy accent.
I really love the quote, "Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day."  (Attribution unknown -- anyone??)  Would I say that, overall, today was a good day?  Not really.  I think that I failed my students in a lot of ways and that there are a lot of things I could have done better.  But was there something good in today?  Absolutely.  I had some really wonderful moments with students and had one lesson that I thought I nailed.
I don't like not being good at things; I am a perfectionist to a fault.  (Heaven knows that's a blog post all its own!)  But I am a new teacher.  I will fall short a lot.  I will make a lot of mistakes.  But I am constantly learning:  from my errors, from my students, from my peers.  I feel so privileged to be surrounded by such a great community and such incredible teachers.
In short:  here's to finding the good in every day.  It's there if you look for it.

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Currently reading:  still in the middle of no less than four books...I have book attention deficit.
Current high:  1.5 days to vacation, and 5 days to the arrival of M and K!
Current low:  less-than-rockin' afternoon in the classroom