The Process affects the Product

I don't think The Husband understands how much TIME one takes to do something as huge as National Board. He makes comments about how I'm always on the computer, blah blah. This morning I informed him that my entire life from now until March 30 when I mail my box is going to be National Board. I warned him when I started this process.

I am working hard on E3 this weekend. Well, today. I gave myself permission to take tomorrow completely off. No school work. No computer. No cell phone (ie where the internet is). No nothing school or National Board related. So today it is. I have an ecgen.org chat in about 2 hours. I am digging the chats because they are UBER helpful. It's always good to hear other people's thoughts and ideas for their entries. I was in chat last night with one other gal who is an ecgen candidate. We were just chatting about everything and nothing and talked a bit about E4. I'm so happy that I was able to help her brainstorm and nail down her ideas for that entry. It just makes you feel good.

I am hopeful to finish my draft of E3 today. Then I will be set with my deadlines still. And I will be thrilled. I haven't touched E2 since I printed it. I plan to finish drafts for all of my entries then ship them off to readers, meanwhile making my own notes, changes and modifications. Once I have feedback from readers, I will take that and my own notes and changes and work on my finals. I REALLY want all of March to work on that aspect of it -- the revision and polishing. If I can get a draft of E3 done today I may ship those two entries off to my readers so I can get them back quicker while I am working on E1 (E4 is pretty much done -- waiting on my latest data to finish it, which the data should be ready by Monday, I hope). 

This process IS overwhelming and frustrating and challenging....but I am finding that I as time goes on and I read more and learn more, I am less overwhelmed and frustrated. I am empowered. I feel like I've made growth in my teaching and my passion for teaching literacy has been recharged for the better. The end product will just be the icing on my cake.