Here We Go Again

It’s time to dust off the bookshelves and line up the desks and clean out the clutter left behind in June’s hasty exit. It’s time to crack open the textbook and make plans and curriculum maps and assignments and units and tests. It’s time to sit in meetings, itching to have more time in the classroom, desperately wishing that the speaker/principal/teacher/district office administrator would finish this part of the inservice so you can all get back to prepping for the school year. It’s time to fire up the desk computer and root around in electronic storage closets for documents you swear you saved because you just knew you’d use them again (hopefully today!), but just cannot seem to locate now, as you can’t remember what any of the cleverly-named files on your flash drive/server/desktop are actually for. It’s time to wade through a daunting mountain of emails in your inbox, to chuckle over the emails that were so crucial in June but no longer matter, and to grumble in frustration when the important email about the first day of school/locker assignments/teacher contract/building security schedule/whatever won’t print because the printer in your pod isn’t back from it’s imaginary vacation yet.

It’s an exciting and aggravating time of year. Back to the classroom… and back to the blog.

I had lofty goals at the start of the break about continuing to blog all summer long, but somewhere in June I decided to do myself a favor and take the non-school months off. If my blog is a window into my classroom and into my life as a teacher, then I probably don’t need to keep the window open when no one is home, so to speak. (I seem to have a serious thing for analogies… I’ll have to monitor that.) At any rate, taking the summer off proved to be a wise choice for me as a blogger, as my graduate classes took up most of my time, and the rest was filled by my summer job. (Note to self: do NOT try to double up on 5-week, 3-credit classes again. It might actually kill you.) But I’ve survived the crazy summer and feel NO need to tell the tale, so I will be settling back into teaching, a school schedule, and my odd little blog.

Today is the first day of school for 6th graders, although 7th and 8th graders don’t start until tomorrow. Yesterday was sunny and warm and lovely, but somewhere in the night, the weather figured out that today is a school day in September and that we live in Portland… so today it’s raining. A lot. Today’s rain features heavy, wet drops falling straight down – guaranteed to soak you on your short trek from car to school doors. The 6th graders are trudging in with a weird aura of excitement and despair surrounding them… (As I notice these things, I catch myself thinking, “This job is SO WEIRD.”) I have to go down to the gym to help the little 6th graders find their homeroom classes now. As I say in class (more times than I want to admit) -- onward and upward!