“Are you ready for school to start again?”
The short answer is no….but it will happen anyway. And, although it will be crazy, busy, and a bit stressful, I will be glad when I am back into the “routine” of school.
I am not, however, one of those people for whom breaks are too long and is itching to be back in school. At my young age, I’m quite certain I would make an excellent retired person…right now. I enjoy traveling, being at home, reading, sitting in the sun, attending Mass when the rest of the working world works, and whatever else it is that retired people do. I get a taste of it every summer and I believe I would do quite well with it as a full-time profession.
Yet there is a certain goodness about a new school year. As a teacher, I have the luck of starting over each year. There are new students (mostly), new energy (hopefully), and new faculty (always). Even as I dread a bit of the crazy that comes with a new year, I cannot entirely squelch the excitement of beginning again.
Each beginning offers a new chance to do better than I did before. And if you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that with me, there is always, always plenty of room for improvement. I plan for new ways to interest the students, new methods to interact with my staff, and new hope that this year I will be the missionary of the classroom that I deeply desire to be. The new school year is home to my litany of new year’s resolutions for my teaching life.
With newness in the professional front, it is easy to let that hope for the new spill into the rest of my life. Hopefully, I will take a step closer to the elusive balance I’m always seeking after. Maybe this will be the time that I start running again, deepen friendships, and try new recipes. The anticipation of the new school year makes me want to be successful on all fronts. Admittedly, that is a bit ambitious, but the new desire reinvigorates me and makes me hope I will be successful this time. Or, at least a bit more successful than I was the last time.
I plan to savor the last few weeks of semi-freedom that I have before I move back into my classroom for the next nine months. I’ll soak up some of the sunshine that I will see from my classroom window, sleep in a bit past when I will usually start the school day, and relish the knowledge that there are no papers to grade yet. And I will try to foster the truth that God is working and the hope that this year I will see Him reveal Himself more fully in and out of the classroom.
Photo by Oskars Sylwan on Unsplash
Seeking After His Heart 