Something Different

If anyone had come down the hall just a moment sooner, they would have seen me banging away on an

African drum I found in the music room.  I couldn't resist, and so found myself tapping out a beat in the middle of my morning walk around the schoolhouse.  Truth is, I would probably have done this if the room was filled with students anyway.  It just happens to be the middle of summer and I am enjoying my new habit of walking the building every morning when I've had enough behind the desk.  It is quiet here, there is no one in the building except for me and the custodians, and I certainly don't want to interrupt their work just because I need someone to talk to.  So I walk.

I have transitioned to a new school and district this summer.  For the first time in ten years, I am completely out of my element; my comfort zone is no longer there for me to fall back into.  This was a most difficult decision for me to make, but it's okay.  I am so very appreciative of everything my previous district gave to me, and I did a lot of learning during those ten years.  A lot.  I will miss my kids terribly, and that is the worst part of the whole transition.  My kids mean everything to me, as I make it a point to know as many of them as I can during every school year.  This makes it all the more difficult to leave, because for them (and for me, honestly), it feels like abandonment.  It is a part of our lives that we have come to expect, this coming to school and knowing that we will see each other every day, that we will have lunch together sometimes, that we will see each other in the hallways, in classrooms, in the cafeteria, in my office when it's time to have a chat.  The knowledge that this is going to change, and that there will be someone new in that office - this has been the hardest part.  For them, and for me.

A new direction, a change, something different.  It is still, obviously, schooling, so it is not that different.  In fact, schooling has not changed much at all in the past 50-100 years, and this is a strange concept in itself. But I will have to explore that topic another time.  For now, I must settle in. Into my new office, into my new school, my new community, where I will get to know new teachers and new parents and students.  I look forward to that.  I look forward to getting to know a whole new group of students, to learning from them, to (hopefully) teaching them something, to something different.