Roller Coasters!

     So the last 24 hours have been a roller coaster for me. My class has been successfully connecting with educators outside of our classroom, they were nailing the content, I received some of my donor's choose items, and at the peak, I was sent an email inviting me to a panel interview for the secondary assistant principal pool! Wow things were going GREAT! I felt like I owned the world! Then came today.

     Today started off at the top of my roller coaster. I was scheduling meetings with my administrators so that I could be the best prepared candidate for my upcoming interview. But that was the turning point. My lessons didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. The majority of my students didn't do well on the mini assessment I gave them over the lessons I had been teaching for the past week. Then in my science lesson, I was working to try and get the next part up after I had walked around and assessed that my students were about ready to move on, and technology failed me. Ok so it could have been user error, but to my defense I have never really used Office 2013. I tried to pull up and present a power point, but it went to the wrong screen. Ok easy enough fix, I knew how to do that. I switched the settings, and then pops up some presentation mode! I've NEVER seen that before! So naturally I am trying to rid my screen of this invasive window, and down goes my power point. Geh! My students were nearly ready when I started this process, so they were definitely going to be itching to move forward. And that's when it happened. I made that critical mistake that teachers do. I sat down in my chair to regain focus, and get my power point going like it needed to be. I finally got it up and looked up JUST in time to catch the eye of my principal escorting a high ranking district official through our area. Yep! 2 minutes earlier, or 2 minutes later and they would have seen some amazing teaching happening, but as luck would have it, they saw me "relaxing" at my desk. So there I was walking around my classroom, hoping that they were still in the area and would swing back by and see that it was a fluke, being even MORE animated in my lesson, really trying to overcompensate for the poor timing that they had when they walked by. But alas, it was fruitless. As I hear it, there was mention about me "sitting behind the computer" to the other administrators. Then came the low point of the day.

     Just an hour after the whole power point debacle, it was time for lunch. I tried not to let what had just happened put a damper on my mood, I mean after all it was 1 time. I warmed up my lunch and decided to check my email. That's when it happened. That's the moment that my heart hit the floor. I received a follow up email to yesterday's great news. No it wasn't to confirm my interview time. Instead, it was an email to let me know that the previous email had been sent out by mistake by the system. Evidently every applicant was sent the email by mistake. Only those with confirmed appointments were to be interviewed, everyone else was instructed to disregard the email. I tried my best to hide my disappointment, but those who are around me know when something is wrong. I had to cancel the meetings that I had worked to set up with my administrators, and tell them the disappointing news. Sure there's a CHANCE, I could still get invited to the pool interview once they finish looking over the applications, but as someone who hasn't been able to make it that far in the process in the past, I am not holding on to those chances. It is what it is. I was overly excited to get an interview opportunity, and I'm disappointed that that opportunity is no longer happening.

     The reason I wanted to share all of this with you, is because I really believe that this is analogous to life.There are always ups and downs in life, with bumps in between. I try to always take the high road when it comes to a situation. Sure I could be angry and upset by today's events, but what would that solve? It wasn't the district's fault that the system messed up any more than it was my computer's fault that my principal came by at the mos in opportune moment of my day. Things happen. We have to learn to move past it. The same is true for our students. Things happen with their assignments. We can be upset that they didn't do well on the assignment, or we can take a step back and figure out how we can help them do better next time. Life is a roller coaster, and we are all riding on it.