Riding the Wave

            I made the most of my summer vacation!   I slept late nearly every day, lounged in the sun at the beach and by the pool, stayed up late watching television, and got an awesome tan.  I lost track of what day of the week it was and thought about no children other than my own. When I think about going back to school next week, I have a vision of myself standing on a beach with a mammoth wave swelling  behind me,  above my head, waiting to crash upon me on teacher orientation day. The last few days of summer vacation are truly the calm before the storm.  They provide the perfect time for reflection about the relaxing time that soon will be behind  me, and anticipation of the stressful days that lie ahead.    

            When you are a teacher, the beginning of the school year is a time to reinvent yourself.  You are a stranger to the students sitting in front of you.   They have never been in your classroom before and they do not know what to expect.  Everything from the daily routines to the tone of the environment has to be established by you.  If you were unhappy with what you did in the previous school year, you can change it now.   You have a clean slate and with that opportunity comes a feeling of power.  Remember how exciting it feels to open up a brand new notebook and see the first blank page?   Once you actually write on the paper you cannot return to the special time before you did so, when you were just planning and dreaming about how you wanted the page to look.   This is how we teachers feel at the beginning of the school year.  We have a the chance to make a fresh start.

            Each September gives you can create new goals to achieve without feeling the guilt of failing at those same goals in the past.  Although the last school year was less than three months ago, to a teacher it feels like a lifetime ago and can barely be remembered.    At the beginning of each school year I set the same goal: to keep the pressures of the job at bay and retain a lasting positive attitude.  I aspire to hold off the wave in my vision, the powerful influx of demands and tasks that have overtaken education and changed the fabric of my job to the point of making it unrecognizable. Wow-  I can feel my heart beating faster and my stress level rising even as I type these descriptive words.

            When I started teaching in 1993 my primary responsibility was to  teach.  My job required me to deliver information to the students in my content area of Social Studies.  Back then, most of the students knew how to read and write and completed their assignments.  Even if they did not like it, back then most students recognized the importance of education and the authority of the teacher.    There was respect for the professionalism and wisdom of teachers.  Parents and administrators were supportive.  Creativity was encouraged and learning could be fun and productive.  The daily schedule included small breaks, allowing students and teachers valuable time to breathe, to communicate, to make personal connections.  It was during one of these nonacademic moments, a former student told me, that I made a comment to her that literally changed her life's direction.

            But as the expression goes, "that was then and this is now."  Ask any educator or student, things are different today.  Schools are run like businesses and  the profit margins are high test scores.  The pace is exhausting and the demands are unreasonable for all involved.  Gone is the creative freedom that was my forte.  Gone are the moments to inspire lives.  Gone is the focus on growing the talents and strengths of each and every student.  We concentrate on numbers, cohorts, and spreadsheets now.  We have data meetings and spend hours and hours staring at numbers of all kinds.  This is the new wave in education, the wave that I am bracing for next week. 

            In many ways I am ready to return to work.  I find comfort in the organization of my family's fall routine.  My mind gets restless by the beginning of August and I crave the intellectual challenges inherent in teaching.  In my heart, I will always feel that teaching is the most noble profession and I am proud that I am an educator.  But as I prepare my classroom for a new group of students, I will also be preparing myself mentally for the pressure and stress that lie ahead.  I am once again setting my annual goal to remain positive as I go to work each day in an environment that no longer makes sense to me.  I am hoping that when the gigantic wave crashes down on my next week, I can ride it.