Uphill

 Sometimes, I wonder aloud why I do what I do. For a living. I grumble. I gripe. And then I go ahead and pack up my kit bag to make the trip back to school the next day.

It was on one of those trips, pedaling up the hill next to my house, that it occurred to me out of the blue: 

Or not.

I do not have to stay in the same job, same school, same profession. I don't have to stay in the place where I landed thirty years ago. This idea of neighborhood is every bit as discouraging at times as it is invigorating. Instead of complaining about "the district" or the ever-shifting sands of my job description, I could take it on the lam and seek out a new place. A better place. 

Different, at least. 

I caught myself staring at a link that read "Kansas has a teacher shortage." I hovered over it for quite some time before choosing to leave it unexplored. Instead, I sat down and tried to piece together the fragments that would be my day. The joke around my school is that it says that I am the computer and PE teacher, but my actual job description is "whatever anyone else isn't doing." There are several of us who wear this badge. With distinction. We are the ones that keep this little engine chugging down the track when there are holes on our roster. When something needs to be fixed, or a class needs to be covered. "Free time" is what I have at home.

I know that there are jobs out there that would not require this same amount of rigor and attention. I also know that there are very few jobs that would allow me the opportunity to get behind and push. All the rescuing and support that I have done over these years has been given back to me. Kenneth hugged me the other day for tying his shoe. Kenneth is a kindergartner, but over the course of my career, I have tied a lot of shoes. 

It was long about the time that I finished that last sentence that my principal appeared at the door. She asked if I would help her get the breakfast ready pass out since our cafeteria manager had called in sick. I got up and went back to work. Sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees, but since the forest is my neighborhood, those are my trees.