Make sure your lessons plans are in the bag and, where are those fruit stickers? Oh, something is missing, as I’m going upstairs I pause and remember, “the tests I was grading until late last night”… I’m running from the kitchen to my desk, to the car, to the kitchen again, while I sip my coffee. There’s an evil pile of papers on the table that is waiting to be sorted, in the meantime, my golden retriever follows me like my shadow, wondering when are we going to spend some quality time, and so it begins.
My regular Monday started with two coffees at least, my bag filled with lesson plans and books, random stickers, dry highlighters, pens, and my laptop; in other words, it looked like it could supply the entire state with stationery. My younglings which loved making Starwars references started my week with all different stories about their weekend. I am not going to lie, sometimes or many times I came home crying filled with frustration, but the little accomplishments made it all worthy.
I knew teaching was my call and for so many years it looked like my natural talent. It felt just good to be around kids, who were eager to learn or jump or play or cry, or everything at the same time.
When I quit teaching a piece of me, stayed in the books, in the classroom, in the lessons plans, in the performances, in the grading, in the parents’ meetings, in the field trips and I thought, “I will never enjoy a job as much as I enjoyed this one”… well I was wrong.
