Hello, lovely friends.
How are you? Well, I hope.
It’s August! Normally I would be back in school by now.
But not this year. This year, I’m sat on my couch or stretched out on my bed, toiling away from my laptop.
It’s a funny feeling, that. For 27 years, August has meant back to school. The slow creep of school supplies on Wal-Mart’s shelves filled me with inexplicable joy and excitement. I loved getting organized, labeling my binders, and picking out new pens.
Even once back to school meant back to work, some of my favorite days were those spent organizing my student’s IEPs, crafting this year’s “this is the one” data binder, and sifting through both old and new materials.
I suppose this year isn’t entirely different. But it’s a pretty significant change, all the same.
You see, I left my part-time job with the local school district at the end of May. I worked the summer ESY sessions in June and then said goodbye to a traditional school job.
At the time, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was pursuing. Just something different.
After a summer of debate, I settled on a hodge-podge of educational or educational-adjacent revenue streams.
Teaching and tutoring online (not speech therapy)
Growing my TpT store
Finally starting an educational blog and sticking to it
Offering VA services for other teacher-creators via proofreading and writing freelance gigs
A couple of other odds and ends, like grading with Literably and writing and editing for non-educational clients
So, this school year back to school has looked like shopping for easy-to-tuck-away standing desks. It’s felt like being a brand new educator all over again, despite 9 years in a public school. It’s been a mixture of excitement and possibilities and anxiety and fear.
Some days, I wake up excited that I’m pursuing my own path.
Others, I can hardly get to sleep for worrying about what kind of horrible mistake I made.
I don’t really know what this new life will look like. But I do know that I’ll be pursuing happiness every step of the way and exploring what it means to be a happy educator and a happy learner in every circumstance.
I hope you’ll join me as I continue on this path of teaching and learning. I’ll be adding new resources to my TpT store with increased frequency and dedicating more time and energy to my blog, social, and newsletter spaces.
It’s going to get even happier up in here.
Stick around!
Wishing you lots of tea and reading time,
Christin ☕️