I love my job. In fact I would go so far as to say I have the best teaching job in the entire state. I have a classroom of ten mentally handicapped high school students that function on a 2 – 6 year old level. We laugh, and learn, and spend our days together trying our hardest and never giving up. My students have a great amount of energy and demand a tremendous amount of attention. Taking care of them involves everything from toileting, and changing, to feeding, to teaching the most basic of skills as letters, numbers, colors, how to write their name, read, and understand numbers. Learning new strategies and ways to teach my students would be something I would greatly benefit from.

When I leave school to take care of my family, I spend additional hours at home grading papers, planning lessons, making communication boards to correspond with my lessons, and calling parents to discuss the ongoing needs of my students. I honestly spend all of my waking hours taking care of the physical and mental needs of my family and students. Time for me would be such a welcome oddity. Learning Tai Chi and other ways to distress throughout the day would defiantly improve my mental heath and allow me to put even more of myself into each day and every relationship.