{"id":524,"date":"2009-09-30T14:44:11","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T22:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/?p=524"},"modified":"2009-09-30T14:44:11","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T22:44:11","slug":"absent-with-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/?p=524","title":{"rendered":"Absent with Leave"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(or at least an excuse.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry, gentle reader, for my neglect. You see, we have recently undergone a certain life change in our home. To be more accurate, I&#8217;m the one who has changed status, from SAHM to student. I&#8217;ve gone back to school to study for a Master-In-Teaching degree.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all rather exciting, daunting, and disconcerting&#8230; all at once. It&#8217;s exciting because I&#8217;m enjoying my courses, fellow students (actually they call us a cohort) and the prospect of a career. I&#8217;ve always believed I had a gift for teaching, and right now I&#8217;m feeling called. I believe God is leading me this direction.<\/p>\n<p>Which leads to the daunting aspect. The fact is that I&#8217;ve been a homeschooler and stay at home mom for so many years (17 as a homeschooler, 20 as a stay at home mom) that the idea of trading it all in feels like a betrayal. I&#8217;ve always said I respect people for making a choice about what&#8217;s best for their children, whether that choice is school, homeschool, or some other option. Yet when I am &#8220;crossing the line&#8221; I feel like I&#8217;m losing my identity and betraying those I&#8217;ve felt a kinship with in the past. I have to just breathe deeply, ask for guidance, and recommit myself to doing what I believe God wants of me at this point in my life, and not let my own self image interfere.<\/p>\n<p>Do I still identify with homeschoolers? Yes. I still think of myself that way, and in fact I still have a daughter studying at home via an online public school program. And I have a son in kindergarten at the local school, because in his case there is little doubt in my mind that he needs it. Nobody has given me a hard time about going back to school to become a teacher; in fact, I&#8217;ve gotten nothing but support and positive words from everyone I know. Still, I feel weird about the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>The weirdest part is that I find myself identifying with teachers,, and classrooms, and classroom management, and all those things that really had an &#8220;otherness&#8221; feel about them before. I never thought teachers were the enemy, so why do I feel like a traitor?<\/p>\n<p>I know this change of perspective is necessary if I am to succeed as a teacher. I need to think about things like a less individualized curriculum, and large group discipline, and seating arrangements and desks and notes home. Somehow, though, it feels like I&#8217;m leaving something behind. So it&#8217;s exciting, yes; but also bittersweet.<\/p>\n<p>I imagine that the tone of my blog will change as I make this transition from housewife to student to new teacher to career person. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m changing tremendously, but I&#8217;m sure going to find myself in new circumstances, and responding to them. I pray that none of this will distract me from my truest calling, to know, love, and serve God in this world, preparing to be happy with Him in the next.<\/p>\n<p>I invite you to go on this journey with me. I&#8217;m going to need the prayers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(or at least an excuse.) I&#8217;m sorry, gentle reader, for my neglect. You see, we have recently undergone a certain life change in our home. To be more accurate, I&#8217;m the one who has changed status, from SAHM to student. I&#8217;ve gone back to school to study for a Master-In-Teaching degree. It&#8217;s all rather exciting, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,36,16],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-homeschooling","tag-our-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}