Yesterday was the end of a very long month; a month filled with stress, fun, excitement, exhaustion, tears, laughter, difficult decisions, travel, and more. Today is a day of many emotions.
As a teacher, I have mixed emotions about this day. It's the day after the last student day of the school year. After 9 months of being with my 7th graders, I have now given birth to a group of 8th graders. As with any school year, it was a year filled with laughter and tears (mine and theirs), drama (this is, after all, Middle School), learning (again, mine and theirs) and so much stress on so many levels. I taught, retaught, reretaught, poked, prodded, encouraged, nagged, rereretaught, fussed, insisted, praised, loved, tough-loved, worried, spent sleepless nights, learned new methods, questioned myself, and taught some more. I upset some students and their parents and they upset me. I endured endless questioning of my methods, personality, decisions, and character by parents and administrators. I set the bar high and was required to lower it (and then heard how my expectations were not high enough). I did what I could. Did I make mistakes? Oh, yes, in a HUGE way. Did I learn from them? I hope so. It was a day of accepting last-minute assignments, grading them, and finalizing grades; a day of signing yearbooks, saying goodbye and good luck, opening my door to two of my girls from last year who launched themselves at me and hugged me until I wondered if they were going to let go and thanking me for what I taught them last year. By the end of the day, I was wrung out.
On Monday, I have to finish packing up my classroom (no, I'm not moving out of the room, but still have to pack everything up - I am NOT going into that today). I will say goodbye to some colleagues who are leaving and that will be difficult - it's also something I don't do well.
Today, Catherine is leaving her beloved Holy Mountain (Sewanee) to begin the next phase of her life. She is moving all of her belongings and her cats to Greensboro, NC where she still has to find a place to live. Wayne flew up on Thursday to help her do this and I couldn't go. So, I am living this from afar and that is incredibly hard.
Today is the beginning of the summer for me and that is a beautiful thing. I have things I want to accomplish and some decisions to make, but I also have a lot of R and R planned - books to read, pictures to take, trips to take, and memories to make. I plan to take care of myself, both physically and mentally and take care of my relationships. Those things come first. Then, I will do some of the more mundane things like cleaning and purging some of the stuff I have accumulated.
The first day of June...so many possibilities.
