It's Time

It's time for a break.
I know that there are plenty of folks out there for whom the next couple weeks will be a terrifying slog of increased stress and torment. Those brave few who work in retail and have to stare down those of us with wild looks in our eyes as we try to find that one last perfect gift before it's too late. You have my sympathies, but if it's all the same to you, I'm going to take my standing eight count, also known as Christmas Break. Or Holiday Break. Or Winter Solstice Sojourn. Whatever gives me two weeks off and a little time to recharge my teacher batteries.
It is an old song. There are plenty of people, and not  just those previously mentioned retail victims, who will hold these next two weeks against me, but I can't imagine that anything good would come from trying to keep the little darlings down on the farm while we attempt to pour knowledge in their heads while they fidget and squirm.
And tear the borders off the bulletin boards we have worked so hard to put up and maintain.
And kick balls over the fence or on the roof "on accident."
And walk out of class because they just weren't ready to be at school that  day.
And no matter how many times we ask them to stand still and/or be quiet, they just don't hear us.
What do we expect, really? They are children, and all those rules and expectations are a complete buzz kill when what you really want to be doing is be sitting on the steps trading Pokemon cards or watching the same three YouTube videos over and over. We don't compete when it comes to the over-stimulation required by most of our young charges.
So we're going to take a break. Maybe over the next two weeks we will find a way to become ever more tolerant and exciting for our pre-teen audience. I will miss some of the interactions, like the morning walks to breakfast I share with one of our youngest students. He seeks me out on the playground each day for a grownup to get him to the line for his milk and breakfast burrito. I will miss the "aha" moments when a student discovers that thing that we have been nattering on about turns out to have meaning in his or her life. I'll look forward to having more of those moments in the coming year, but right now it's time to head off to our respective corners and prepare for the time when we meet again. On the other side.