Tomorrow I report to school at that ever unreasonable hour of 7:15 A.M. to greet...students.
Needless to say, emotions are mixed. I've had a wonderful summer, traveling and generally enjoying myself with friends and interesting people. For that I am very grateful, for both summer and time to rest. At the same time I thrive in the structure of school, with deadlines and patterns and repetition; without them I falter and piddle, bumble around all day half reading, half doing, half being. A poor excuse for existence, but one I find maddeningly difficult to avoid during four day layovers in Delaware.
Yet I dread the return, for I am not prepared. My principal remarked this week that she has been teaching for twenty years, and every year her friends ("bright conversationalists," she called them) ask "are you ready?" And the answer is always "no." More lessons to write, more children to deal with, new material to incorporate or change, new methods, ideas, rules...and yet always the same. It's a strange paradox.
Every teacher I have ever met says "the first year is always the worse." Doubtless their testimony is true, the confidence of knowing (even vaguely) what the coming year holds is strong medicine, perhaps to the point of overlooking the immediate for more long-term perspectives. Faculty in-service meetings are filled with talk of "change this" or "do that," character development, vision. These are key, especially in a classical Christian school whose membership finds it easy to get off track. All the talk is good; but when I come to teach tomorrow I suspect I shall find myself rather overshot, launching into a discourse of Medievalism or the unique American character well before I have done my first duty: caring for my students.
They are marvelous little people, they push and stretch me and have "ah ha" moments that make all the late nights and red ink justifiable. Some of my favorites have left, some will be problems; they will doubtless leave me scratching my head with awe or confusion. I saw the mother of one of my new 8th graders in the copy room the other day, and she remarked how C. was really looking forward to my Western Civ class. Normally one would be pleased, and reply with some remark about how much they were looking forward to having C. (a student of solid repute, let it be known) in their class. Instead I just stammered something about how glad I was he wasn't dreading it, as if education and learning were negative acts done in the heavy toil of suffering. May it not be so for him, or me. I'll be ready--for something.
