Another school year has gone by, and I am always left somewhere between excited to begin the beautiful splash of summer and wistful to leave my classroom and the students I have grown to know and love.
The seasons of teacher's life are unique to this profession. I imagine they are the very reasons I loved the mountains in Virginia. I could always look up at them and see where I was in the year. Crazy bright colored in the fall, dark muted or mottled white in the winter,
and bright green and almost glowing in the spring and summer. The point is- the trees on those mountains never stayed the same. They changed, they felt different- much like the halls of the school. When I worked in a hospital, the halls never felt altered. The fluorescent glow of lights, the glare of the floors, the patients, the ebb and flow of energy -day after day- stayed the same.
And then the bell rings that last day of school, and the kids, the squeals, the energy, the laughter that peals through the halls, and everyone smiles. We all picture sunshine and oceans. We all smell salt water and the coconut suntan oil that almost no one has worn since 1976, and the summer seems like a long unending road for just that moment- just like it did when you were a kid. Other adults have forgotten that feeling, but we teachers, we remember, and it is so nice to enjoy that feeling with all of these kids around us.
Then the hall settles. The atoms suspend, and even the lockers seem forlorn. My classroom suddenly feels strange to me, and I realize that the season has changed.
And so my summer begins...
The seasons of teacher's life are unique to this profession. I imagine they are the very reasons I loved the mountains in Virginia. I could always look up at them and see where I was in the year. Crazy bright colored in the fall, dark muted or mottled white in the winter,
and bright green and almost glowing in the spring and summer. The point is- the trees on those mountains never stayed the same. They changed, they felt different- much like the halls of the school. When I worked in a hospital, the halls never felt altered. The fluorescent glow of lights, the glare of the floors, the patients, the ebb and flow of energy -day after day- stayed the same.
And then the bell rings that last day of school, and the kids, the squeals, the energy, the laughter that peals through the halls, and everyone smiles. We all picture sunshine and oceans. We all smell salt water and the coconut suntan oil that almost no one has worn since 1976, and the summer seems like a long unending road for just that moment- just like it did when you were a kid. Other adults have forgotten that feeling, but we teachers, we remember, and it is so nice to enjoy that feeling with all of these kids around us.
Then the hall settles. The atoms suspend, and even the lockers seem forlorn. My classroom suddenly feels strange to me, and I realize that the season has changed.
And so my summer begins...