I'm a first year teacher...failure comes with the position!

I  am going to cheat a little bit on blogging and pretend a discussion board post from class i s really a blog post. Discussion board post or not, it pretty much describes my life right now.

I am a first year teacher in my first quarter of teaching. Failure comes with the position!

In all seriousness,as a new teacher I have experienced more failure than success. I could give you hundreds of instances of when I have made the wrong decision, turned in something late, said the wrong thing, set the wrong tone, or taught an impossible-to-understand lesson. What I am slowly realizing is that failure comes with the territory of being a first year teacher. It is really easy to become defeated by each of my little failures. It is really easy to absorb this negative energy. It effects me and it effects my students. What I have realized is that it is not the failures that matter, it is my response to them. How do I fix the problem? How can I re-teach a lost lesson? How can I prevent mistakes from happening again? I am trying to use failure as a learning tool, but it is one of those things that is easier said than done!

Falling forward...inspiration from my grad school professor: