Once Again

 Back in the salt mines we call primary education, we have just moved into the countdown phase of the school year. I did not take my cue from the multitude of children around me. This came as part of our principal's weekly newsletter. We began the week just thirty-four days left. That means that we will be gathered together for less than five weeks with two major sign posts on the horizon: State testing and fifth grade promotion. Both of these rites stand as reminders of how nominally fortunate we are to have lived past the big swinging ax of school closure. The goodbyes that we had anticipated a year ago are now reserved for the departing and incipient middle schoolers. And the staff members who will be looking for new paths and challenges outside our little slice of heaven. 

It's been a tough year. The first half was all about legitimizing our continued existence, and the second found us scrambling to catch up with all those schools who had been quietly preparing for 2023-24 while we were just hanging on. Oh, and there was that part where we were teaching a school full of kids whose awareness of where they are on the one hundred eighty instructional day calendar is vague at best. 

Sometimes I shame myself a little for the way I keep track of the time passing. The day of the week. The time of day. Working for Friday afternoon when I know exactly what the turnaround to Monday morning is. When I look back at twenty-six years of waiting for the weekend, I wonder how sincere my commitment to my students can be. I'll be there early. I'll stay late. I'll take work home with me. I'll go to meetings. I'll do all that with that clock ticking in my head. 

It's the same clock I hear when I'm on Spring Break, or over your standard weekend. It's just a little more pleasant sound when I'm not working. The hope is that I will take my relaxation as seriously as I take my work. One serves the other. I suspect that as the years have passed, I am at once more comfortable with the rhythms of a school year and also more anxious for the bell to ring. 

Not for the first time. And happily, not for the last time. There's always next year. Once again.