I am at day two of my first ISTE conference, and I am experiencing information overload. Most of the sessions have been beyond helpful, and this conference has really made me miss teaching fullt-time. I can’t wait to get back in the classroom and put what I have learned into use.

Of course, being on the fertility roller coaster and knowing that we are moving somewhere (but no real idea where) next spring/summer means trying to teach full-time this year isn’t going to happen. Trust me, I desperately want to add to our family. My heart just isn’t whole if I don’t teach.

If you haven’t ever fallen in love with your job, I don’t think you’ll ever understand why I can’t be content being only a stay-at-home mom. When I taught at Borgia, Seton, and St. Mary’s, my students allowed me to accompany them on a very tough period of their lives, and being a campus minister at Borgia and Seton allowed me to know some of their stories even more intimately.

I hope students learned something in my classroom, but more importantly, I think my role as a teacher was to expose them to new things, to help them dream about their futures, and to give them as many tools as I could to make those dreams come true.

During the last few months, I have received sweet e-mails from a handful of students from Seton and St. Mary’s. Some are graduating from college. Some were telling me about their dreams for the future and how much I helped them to get where they are. One was even telling me about his creative writing and had been sharing with me his work. I am in awe of the amazing things my former students are doing. I have students all across the country who are changing this world, who are making it better, and who are in love with life.

So many people think negatively of teenagers. I have, however, have always loved being around them. High school freshmen are my favorite grade to teach because I could do so much with them and they didn’t know better. They just assumed that my challenges were what high school was like, and they jumped each time I raised the bar. At the end of the year, they are just amazed at by the knowledge they gained, and they love when I would share with them that I had them doing work that juniors or seniors did.

I guess the good thing about taking this “sabbatical” of sorts is that I’m not sitting around doing nothing. I’ve sharpened my skills, added new ones, learned so much about technology and education, and am even in the process of creating my own educational consulting business, The Techy Teacher.

I just hope that at this time next year, I am getting ready to finish to my last class in my M.Ed in instructional technology program, living in my new home with Mark and two adorable kids and my two dogs, and getting ready to teach full-time once again.