I immediately made eye-contact with a student and we smiled at each other.
I watched my students. I watched them all focused on crafting their weekly emails, and I watched them quietly talk, point to their screens, smiling. I circulated the room and saw how engrossed they were in their emails, where they were telling their parents (and extended family for many) about their work and learning in all classes. They were uploading links to their work. I clicked open their documents and the links to their final projects.
Almost every student reflected that they loved writing. Almost every student said that first.
I’m not ready for the end of the year. Oh, I’m ready to sleep in, and I’m ready to choose each and every moment of my day, but I’m really not ready to be done. I’m tired and overwhelmed, but I’m not pushed to my limit. I’m still peddling faster than I’m going forward, but I’m still good with peddling.
For weeks, people have been asking me if I’m ready for the end of the year, and I am always so uncomfortable with that question. I’ve been all-out for months with teaching, track, and Smackah. I’ve been behind in just about everything (feedback and grading for students, emails, laundry, cleaning, calling my parents, texting my brother and sister, helping out my team and grade level, feeding the cats (kidding)). But that just makes me less than ready to be done. I want to settle back in to a relatively normal school life, where I can enjoy moments.
I’m exhuasted, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to be done with the school year. Oh, I’ll get used to it once school is done for the year, but I’m never ready to end the school year.
I also feel awkward when teachers pass by me and say, “Hey, it’s almost Friday.”
I also feel awkward when people gripe about Mondays (well, except I do simply because I don’t know how to get out of bed in the morning and get myself going:).
I love my job, so I don’t look for the weekend and again, I enjoy it once it comes, but I don’t wait all week for it. And I don’t hate Mondays.
And I don’t need the end of the year. Well, I do. I’ll decompress and re-energize, and it will be so good and so needed. But I don’t see that through the trees.
When I looked up today, finally, at my students, not at their words on their documents, and their pictures on my screen, I realized I needed some real time with them again. We’ve all been so busy working, we’re not interacting in a relaxed, human way. So, I will spend as much time as I can this last week to see their faces as they work, as they interact with their peers.
It is gratifying, in a way, to realize how seriously my students take their work. To realize how the classroom feels like a place of business, with everyone doing their jobs. But we’ve all been so busy that I’ve missed being silly with them.
That’s important. But it’s feeling urgent too. There are only 6 days left.
Gratitude: getting back to important.
Goal: pack in as much interaction with my students as I can in this short time before summer break.