After being inactive for many years, the ADTEACHER blog is back!

Wow, I unearthed a dusty, inactive blog and have decided to reactivate and write more now that I've just let it rest since the 2012-13 school year.

I have been experiencing many hearty, rich years of active teaching recently, including having the
honor of being selected to the Top 5 finalists for Lewisville ISD Teacher of the Year in the 2016 school year. I didn't "win"- that honor goes to Rhonda Shelton, an awesome English teacher at Lewisville High School - but being chosen in a grouping of five high school teachers out of many thousands in LISD put a nice bow on the whole experience of teaching high school in Texas for over 20 years and still felt like a giant win to me. Thanks to everyone who has inspired me over the years. I hope you all know who you are.

The aforementioned honor is not all that matters about these recent years, that is for sure. I think the most important part of these years by far have been the numerous students that have made their way through my studio and therefore become a part of my daily life. I have had big successes and some heartwrenching conversations about the future and young people's hopes and dreams that seem impossible to process sometimes. Really, any good teacher understands their students and wishes for them to be the best version of themselves that they can become. Even though it seems that we live in an affluent community with everything we need at our disposal, there are students with obstacles in their way. Helping them as much as possible has been an overriding concern in this, the closing year of my life as a teacher. I feel on any normal day like a combo platter of counselor, coach, and critic.

My desk is still awaiting its final cleaning. Moving boxes in background.

Yes, I have decided that this was to be the very last year that I will teach, and at that, I have restarted this blog at the end of the last year. So rather than speaking so much about education in this new chapter, I will be speaking more about the transition of my life from a professional educator to that of a new creative being. Get ready, world. The new me is about to emerge!

The Career Center East studio during classtime.

My plans? I want to write for young children and illustrate too. I want to travel, get my health on track, spend some time recharging, and also to do more photography and learn some new digital tricks as well as re-establish my own studio space at home. There will be a fair amount of time devoted to continuing to remodel my 1980s vintage home, starting with finishing several projects that are already underway.

Another huge priority is a "possession purge." I need to rid myself of things that don't bring true happiness and only keep those things that I find I really need. I did this with my closet full of shoes not too long ago, and surprisingly, it felt great to just give them away. Many of them were very wearable, just had stuck around longer than necessary in my closet.

Life is never quite boring at this stage of the game, and reality has nearly set in now that I am about to reclaim the possession of my daily hours and to plan to do the things that I really want to do in my "senior years" even though I barely feel old enough to be labeled an adult. I have had so many great experiences and I know there are many more to come. I am so thankful to have time with my husband, my parents are both still healthy and live not too far from me, my children are all three Metroplex residents, and my grandchildren are even a 15-20 minute trip away from me! It is just as perfect as it can be for a happy future, and even though I wish some key events in the past year hadn't happened (more about that later) I feel very lucky.

Keep watching this blog for my new musings. I have lots of thoughts and some might be helpful to you or at least interesting or entertaining.

More soon!

Lobby of my school.