I’m spent today (and will spend tomorrow) in Park City at Mastery Con. Not as cool as Comic Con, but I still might wear a stormtrooper costume anyway. Maybe I’ll just wear my new Star Wars shoes. This is my summer uniform – graphic tee, stretchy pencil skirt (WHY CAN’T I FIND SHORTS THAT COVER MY TESTIMONY AND FIT AND DON’T MAKE ME WANT TO SET MYSELF ON FIRE) and sneaks.

Anyway this thing is a teacher conference (my first ever! I’m a real teacher now!) focusing on this philosophical move to mastery based grading. It was hosted and planned by Mastery Connect – The Beard’s company, which my district bought this year. About 10 teachers, administrators and counselors from my school are attending this conference and it’s been crazy to see how quickly I snapped back into teacher mode. To be fair I also snap back into teacher mode at Seven Peaks. (“Stop running. Hey, you’re dripping on that girl. Get away from that kid. That’s not your tube.” and they look at me like “WTF that’s not even like a mom.”)

I always worry that I’ll be terrified or digging in my heels when back-to-school rolls around. LOL at that because fresh pencils and stacks of pristine notebooks in the Back to School displays are my porn. I have a little over a month left and I’m definitely gonna use every one of those days. But I think I’ll be ready to go back. I always am.

Sitting down today, one of the teachers told me that our rosters were up on Skyward. I could see my kids! I mean, those will change dramatically all the way up until the second week of school and those 185 kids will quickly turn into 200 as we get our huge influx of late enrollment. But still!

There they were. Those little baby faces in a rainbow of thumbnails. Who are YOU going to be? YOU look like a problem. No way is that kid really 13. Nerd. Jock. Airhead. Is it wrong to judge them so quickly on a year-old school photo?

I flashed back so quickly to my kids this past year. I LOVED these kids. In my soul.  I LOVED THEM. Hands down my best year yet. I will carry those kids with me forever. And they started out like this – blurry thumbnails on my screen. Some of them proved me right. Some of them proved me wrong. But each of those kids started out as a thumbnail and ended up as a fleshed-out piece of my heart.

Does my heart have what it takes to do that again? I have now taught and influenced north of 600 kids. (Which I realize is NOTHING compared to lifelong teachers. I can’t even imagine that number. But this is a start and it’s big for me.) Does my heart have room for another 200? 400? 600? They say the heart expands and has no limit. I hope that’s the case, but I definitely filled every nook and cranny last year.

My first year students, the kids I taught at Mapleton Junior High, are seniors this year! Those kids, including my awesome cousin Josh are the graduating class of 2015. BANANAS. HAHAHAHA those poor kids. They watched me struggle. They watched me fumble my way through World Geography every day. But I hope they also watched me watching them.  Apprehensively. With care. With concern. With love.

This guy performed at our conference and killed it. I teared up and felt all warm and fluffy. If you have never seen this, please watch it. I don’t make a ton of money. And it may seem to all of you that all I “make” is hilarious #jrhighprobs tweets and blog posts.

I may not have made a difference to all 600+ of those kids. But I know I did for at least a few. And while I don’t want to go back to school RIGHT THIS INSTANT, I am really excited to go back in a month and see if I can do it all again.

Start your countdowns, people. #jrhighprobs returns in 40 days on August 26th.