I Just Want To Rock And Roll All Night

This is h0w I know that it's really over: There was karaoke. Had this been just a drill or simulation, there would not have been any karaoke. Nope, this was the real thing. My living room was filled with adults at various stages of sobriety singing (if that is the correct term) along with many of the better known pop chestnuts from the past forty years: "Push It", "Born To Be Wild", "Dance To The Music".
The school year has come to an end, not just for the students, but for the teachers as well. Tonight was the cathartic romp that we choose to enjoy twice a year - once at Christmas before we part ways for a couple weeks, and at the beginning of summer vacation. The irony was not lost on most of us, since we know that we will see each other early Monday morning as Summer School opens.
But that's different. One hundred and eighty instructional days, plus a good many "teacher work days" later, the calendar page drops lazily to the floor, and we can all shed our stress and woe about the kids that didn't quite make it, or the lesson plan that collapsed under its own pretense. We ate. We drank. We sang. We laughed. We put a big loud exclamation point at the end of what was a periodically very challenging but ultimately successful campaign. So much of our time is spent locked in rooms with children that we forget to communicate with each other. We did that tonight. The teachers partied like rock stars. Well, very tired and poorly financed rock stars, but party we did. Aloha 2006-2007.