~don't look back~
Sooner or later, it will be permissible to return to school once again.
We just have to wait and be patient.
Easier said than done.
I have thought about how strange it will feel to turn the key and unlock my classroom door when the time comes that it is deemed safe to reenter. It will be a very humbling experience for me and I fully expect a tear to fall. Other teachers will be returning also as they finish up what is left to do before leaving until school resumes in the fall.
It will be different for me.
I will be packing all of my things as I prepare to not return again.
It seems like months since I was last with my students in our 5th grade classroom, when in reality it hasn't even been quite 4 weeks. The things that decorated the hallway right outside our classroom door are still there, hanging and awaiting our return. It seems so ironic to me now that one of the things I chose for them to do was to make their top 10 list of the most important things they had learned in the 5th grade so far. That's usually something I would save for the final weeks of school, but for some reason it seemed important to me that first week of March to assign it early.
I could not have known what was yet to come.
None of us did.
When the day comes that I can go back in to retrieve everything that belongs to me and prepare the room for the teacher who will follow, I hope I can do so with a grateful and happy heart. I feel a huge loss, deep grief at times, for a school year that couldn't play out in the normal fashion. This was it for me, my final year and the time that has passed since the virus began will never be retrieved for a "do over" again. I don't know how much time I will be allowed to be in my room, so I am already devising a game plan of how to expedite the process of completing closing the room up.
I know how to work fast.
I just hope that I don't have to.
Yesterday as I was working from home and trying to get some things taken care of for my students, I had the strangest of awakenings. I realized that in less than a month's time, I no longer have to worry about many things. There will be no more reports to fill out or lesson plans to make. 40+ years of grading papers, facilitating parent-teacher conferences, sitting in faculty meetings, being observed by administrators, planning for substitutes, learning new technology and curriculum, and a plethora of other requirements to be an educator will be no more. In a way it is a huge relief, yet in another it is a heavy burden to carry because of one thing.
Finally at long last as I near the occasion of my 65th birthday in the fall, I must learn to find myself and discover who I am outside of the confines of a classroom, and that dear friends, can be a scary thing.
Many have told me that I will enjoy my retirement and others have warned me that it might hit me upside the head like that proverbial ton of bricks. I'm not sure what I will do at first, although I do know that I would like to sub next year at least for a while. Time will tell. The months of the summer ahead will be ones that I hope to rest in. There has been so much that I would have wished to do, but never really found the time to follow through with it. Perhaps now I will be able to. I do love to write and am in the process of downloading and printing off the more than 1,200 stories that I've written in blogs since 2010. Perhaps I will turn them into a book or I may just leave them in a box for my own children when I am gone. As I read through them, it is with a thankful heart that I have a virtual diary of my life for the past ten years. I only wish I had done it sooner.
Today is a "do over".
Live life in whatever way you can this day to its fullest, and oh one another thing.
Don't look back.
We just have to wait and be patient.
Easier said than done.
I have thought about how strange it will feel to turn the key and unlock my classroom door when the time comes that it is deemed safe to reenter. It will be a very humbling experience for me and I fully expect a tear to fall. Other teachers will be returning also as they finish up what is left to do before leaving until school resumes in the fall.
It will be different for me.
I will be packing all of my things as I prepare to not return again.
It seems like months since I was last with my students in our 5th grade classroom, when in reality it hasn't even been quite 4 weeks. The things that decorated the hallway right outside our classroom door are still there, hanging and awaiting our return. It seems so ironic to me now that one of the things I chose for them to do was to make their top 10 list of the most important things they had learned in the 5th grade so far. That's usually something I would save for the final weeks of school, but for some reason it seemed important to me that first week of March to assign it early.
I could not have known what was yet to come.
None of us did.
When the day comes that I can go back in to retrieve everything that belongs to me and prepare the room for the teacher who will follow, I hope I can do so with a grateful and happy heart. I feel a huge loss, deep grief at times, for a school year that couldn't play out in the normal fashion. This was it for me, my final year and the time that has passed since the virus began will never be retrieved for a "do over" again. I don't know how much time I will be allowed to be in my room, so I am already devising a game plan of how to expedite the process of completing closing the room up.
I know how to work fast.
I just hope that I don't have to.
Yesterday as I was working from home and trying to get some things taken care of for my students, I had the strangest of awakenings. I realized that in less than a month's time, I no longer have to worry about many things. There will be no more reports to fill out or lesson plans to make. 40+ years of grading papers, facilitating parent-teacher conferences, sitting in faculty meetings, being observed by administrators, planning for substitutes, learning new technology and curriculum, and a plethora of other requirements to be an educator will be no more. In a way it is a huge relief, yet in another it is a heavy burden to carry because of one thing.
Finally at long last as I near the occasion of my 65th birthday in the fall, I must learn to find myself and discover who I am outside of the confines of a classroom, and that dear friends, can be a scary thing.
Many have told me that I will enjoy my retirement and others have warned me that it might hit me upside the head like that proverbial ton of bricks. I'm not sure what I will do at first, although I do know that I would like to sub next year at least for a while. Time will tell. The months of the summer ahead will be ones that I hope to rest in. There has been so much that I would have wished to do, but never really found the time to follow through with it. Perhaps now I will be able to. I do love to write and am in the process of downloading and printing off the more than 1,200 stories that I've written in blogs since 2010. Perhaps I will turn them into a book or I may just leave them in a box for my own children when I am gone. As I read through them, it is with a thankful heart that I have a virtual diary of my life for the past ten years. I only wish I had done it sooner.
Today is a "do over".
Live life in whatever way you can this day to its fullest, and oh one another thing.
Don't look back.
I have lived a very simple life and that is all right with me.
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