Golden Silence

This is my first time writing since I started school.

I feel bad not sharing my thoughts, but even now, I don't feel like I have anything to say.

Unlike last year, where I was processing and reflecting and shouting to this blog all of my thoughts, dreams and imaginings about the start of the year, this year I feel profound silence in the writing part of my brain.

"ישב בדד וידום, כי נטל עליו"

Quiet. Just quiet.

I'm getting a reputation in my new school as "having ideas as often as the Amidah-- morning, noon and night". I still think and play and dream and imagine what might work better and what doesn't work at all. I even have a mentor this year, whose sessions are like therapy :-). Just this week I started rewriting the MaTok that my school uses into something that resembles standards and benchmarks. And my supervisor likes new things more than I do.

The silence is a different kind of quiet. It's the kind that spells content. Content in the four walls of my school, the kindness of the other teachers. Content and grateful to be in a school where the good things are noticed, where my biggest problem is that I get exercise (my body and my creativity) because I have no computer, where everyone has everyone else's best interests in mind and always are supportive, and where at the end of a long week and a long day of teaching the biggest complaint from my boss is that I didn't smile!

I'm content, and my mind is quiet, because it's only my second year of teaching and that I'm in a place where I can feel successful every day, and where growing and learning (for teachers too) is good and healthy and normal. I see now that this is how it's meant to be, and really, after my big needs like that are met, I feel like there's nothing left to say.