What a Good Day

Today is one of those days when I came home, looked at myself in the mirror, smiled and said, "Good job Jamie."

The day started with a message from a dear person in my life telling me they think I'm amazing. How does your day not go well when it starts with that?

Then this morning, I hammered out our English department portfolio. It just seemed to fall into place, even though for the last few weeks it just hasn't been working for me. (Hence the reason I put it off until the day it was due.)

Yearbook- deadline today. My students were great and I finished everything I could do for it with lots of class time to spare.

After first period, the counselor walked in with his "student teacher." He said she needed to observe a master teacher, and wondered if she could sit in my class for 20 minutes. Me? A master teacher? Sure... and honestly, I felt really good about what she watched. It was a good activity.

During prep period I worked on our PowerPoint for our presentation. It also came together really well- and I'm not sure why I've been dreading doing it for a week now. The department came in at 1:30, and they were impressed with it too. We actually had a lot of fun adding to it, revising it, and planning out the actual presentation. I was completely nervous for us, but at the same time, I knew we were ready. We are a good department, and all we had to do was show off.

Our English presentation went so well! My department just flowed... and listening to us, I was impressed by all of them and by all of the work we did this fall. 

At the end of the presentation, our principal said he had one question. "You mentioned that your goal was for 80% of your students to pass..." And I interrupted (not a proud moment) and said, "Before you continue, can I correct you on that? Our goal is for EVERY student to score 80% or above. We know that may seem impossible, but it our goal that all students succeed." He said, "Sorry- that was actually what I was going to question. That's all I needed to know."

I feel pretty good about that because when we wrote our goals, I FOUGHT the department to choose EVERY student. They kept telling me that we'd never realistically achieve that, but I told them it didn't matter how many goals we checked off the list, but that we had to set a goal for EVERY child. They agreed and we worked out our goals.

And today, they realized I knew what I was talking about. And that felt good.

After the three hour department meeting- I finished up the yearbook deadline. I was done at the stroke of five. Half the book is complete... and it is going to be good.

As I was leaving the school, one of the panel members stopped me. She told me my department works better together than any other department in the school, even though we're the largest group. She also said that they were impressed with our organization and portfolio (the one from this morning), and it made their scoring very easy. She was very impressed with us.

And to top it all off- even though it was a crazy busy day- I came home and cooked dinner. That makes eleven days of not eating dinner out. I'm pretty proud of myself.

What. A. Good. Day.