Verb Tense

One thing I'm struggling with is if I should say, I am a teacher, or, I was a teacher. (It now occurs to me that this is a very English teacher thing to think about in the first place). Some part of me feels like I will always be a teacher, but I'm not currently working. Saying I was a teacher makes me feel like I don't plan to go back to teaching, but I do.

Its odd to me that I haven't really taught in a year, when school let out last year. But, I did my grad practicum last summer and then subbed for a couple weeks in Sept just before Natalie arrived, so I think it really is 9 months away from my profession. It doesn't feel that long. Its gone by in a blink.

Its funny because teaching used to take up so much of my time (whereas now that time is mostly taken up with Natalie). Not only was it that I was physically at the school from about 7 to 4 every week day, but I had so much grading all the time. When I wasn't grading, I was taking grad classes and doing work for those. Even my free time reading was usually spent either reading YA books (which I happen to like so I guess its a blurry line as to if it was work or not) or teaching books. And of course there was prep time working on handouts, calendars, lessons, parent contact, my web site. I've traded the time consuming job of teaching for being a mom.

The only part of my professional work that has carried over is the reading; I read all the time now. This in itself is funny because my first three years of teaching I did almost no reading. I had to force myself to read when I took my YA lit course, and I had to read 15 books during my end of year grading crunch. Thus, I learned that I could read and do all my other teaching duties at the same time. I've mostly been reading children's books because I was inspired to read them after reading a top 100 children's book list, but it is also easier to get these books because we are in that room of the library when we go to story time. I'm beginning to think that it is time to use this free time in my life to get some teaching reading done, too. I have 43 eduction books listed on Goodreads waiting to be read! I'm a little conflicted about reading these books. In some ways, I feel like I could become very well read in my field in the next few years with so much free time. But, I worry about forgetting most of what I read before I have a change to use it. I also worry that it will become out dated. Without an in in the field, I won't know the newest material to be reading.