Almost, anyway. Two more days. I got this.
Is it silly to say I’ll miss it? As busy and draining and wild as it is, I do love the rush of August. I wouldn’t mind doing it twice a year.
No, that’s not true. That would throw me off so much. Like anything else, a school year has a rhythm, and each season brings its own challenges. August ends, we settle into September, and boom! It’s October. Fall break and the scramble to get things done while the classrooms are empty. Many of the great plans from the beginning of the year aren’t working, so rearranging and rethinking are in order. Not to mention fixing all the things we’ve been getting by with–new holes in the walls, old glitches in the heating in that one classroom…and then we’re back, and it’s second quarter, and holy CATS how is it nearly Thanksgiving break??
I certainly should be used to the rhythm of the school year by now. It’s hard for me to believe, but I’ve been working in schools for over twenty years.
Many times I’ve said that I don’t know how people work in regular offices. How do you cope without regular incursions of the small and squirmy? Do you just…not have swearing teens stomp through your office demanding that their parent be called because that woman is traumatizing them?
How do you manage week after week in which no parent shows up with a baby sibling to coo over??
Anyway. I am grateful for my interruptions, though they make it harder to get my work done. My day is better with frequent reminders of who I’m doing the work for.
It helps that they are so stinkin’ cute. Yes, even the swearing teen. But I was thinking more of the little man who every day wants to see the face on my emoji flip book, and then give a hug to the nearest three people before he trots on to class. Or the little ones who, when I hold the door for them when they arrive late, take my hand and take me to their class.
Last week an enterprising pair had the idea to buy all the sodas from the snack cart, and then sell them to their classmates later at 100% markup. Recently some of the older students have begun coordinating bathroom breaks so they can meet up and hang out in some secluded corner. Just ditching class. Like kids do.
Before they come to us, many of them didn’t have friends. I’m not saying the staff is so delighted they’re having these experiences that we don’t go hunt them down…but we are happy they’re having these experiences.
It’s funny to me, that being around kids, interrupted by kids, sometimes having things thrown at me by kids, has only made my love for kids grow. When I applied to my first school, all I wanted was to stop working fast food. My aunt worked at a school, and encouraged me to apply, and once even brought me an application in the drive-through at Wendy’s. I handed her the lunch she’d ordered, and she handed me papers.
When I was in middle school, I remember looking at the teachers and wondering what had happened to them in their lives, that they’d ended up teaching seventh grade. Not the cute elementary, not the high school kids growing into actual human beings, but the awful “tweens,” breaking out and hormonal and still thinking fart jokes were the height of humor…
Then, twenty years later, I got a job in a middle school.
Luckily, this time around I loved the tweens. The smartasses, the shy, the struggling, the brilliant, the rebels…every last one. I worked there thirteen years, long enough some of the ones I nagged to get their butts to school dropped by later to talk about their jobs and let me snuggle their babies. Then I moved to my current school (finishing my tenth August here!) and I get to enjoy all the ages, from the very littles to the large and confused, like puppies whose legs doubled in length overnight…
All of them. So stinkin’ cute.
Anyway, August. We all ought to know by now not to expect too much from me in August, but here’s an almost-late, short, and rambly blog post. Yay, me!