Sr. Wooly caught this image of me just before break in December…  Oh wait, that’s a video screenshot… but still, that’s how I felt!  It was time for a break!

2017 was a great year… but don’t forget, as you return to work looking ahead to 2018, that even an overall great year can have some HUGE bumps in the road!

Highlights: I finished my first year at a new school and started my second year!  I went to  Ecuador and the Galapagos with the amazing Kara Jacobs and had so.much.fun.  I went to iFLT, to ICTFL, keynoted WAFLT and CIIA, went to CSCTFL and ACTFL… I got National Geographic Educator Certification.  I sent my daughter to Spain for a semester abroad.  My son is getting better at both piano and guitar… and I had my 23rd anniversary!  What a year!

But with all the good came a big bump.  I wrote something.  Something I really loved.  It was a project I let myself get too close to!  Let me assure you, we can get WAY too close to our own work!  I thought it was the best thing I ever wrote and it was a stinker!! Seeing it in its finished form and then realizing it was not good enough for YOU to see in its finished form really made me feel bad about myself as an author!  But you know what?  I put it away.  I dropped it into the folder with such fascinating titles as “Bianca Nieves y Sábado” and “La Invasión”… the folder where things go to die!  And I put my heart into getting my Nat Geo certification… and slowly the funk is lifting! 🙂  It isn’t easy to see things we care about go down in a blaze of glory but it is so important!  Without these failures, we never grow!  Oh and that highlight of my daughter going to Spain… also a bump!  I miss her.  Come home, daughter! (Jan 12 is still so far away).

So please remember that for every huge success you have this year, there might be an accompanying huge fail!  Go back to your room in 2018 with a renewed desire to pick yourself up when things don’t turn out like you imagined!

“I know the plans I have for you…” Our plans are not always the right plans!

Happy New Year, friends!  Looking forward to seeing you at iFLT, CSCTFL, ICTFL, ACTFL…  Be there!