Stop Complaining

After a hiatus of nearly two months, I've finally returned to this blog. I use the term "hiatus" pretty loosely, seeing as how my absence hasn't been any kind of a hiatus at all (summer might bring the true hiatus), but instead a steady stream of end-of-school responsibilities in May and June that became practically unmanageable.

But not really. Not really unmanageable. Typical. Usual. To be expected. And I handled them all relatively well: the PPTs, the CPTs, the last essays, the union meetings, the exams - creation, modification, correction, the retirement parties, the elections, the classroom cleaning, the meetings about next year's batch, the graduation... and the housekeeping, the car maintenance, the grocery shopping and meal preparation, the laundry, too....

I made a conscious decision, on a daily basis, to forego writing here. Part of me struggled with the loss of one laptop, the acquisition of a borrowed another, the desktop sitting idly by (but all the way downstairs), and the iPad I was lent. I hemmed and hawed about the device on which I would write, until it was time for bed and I hadn't written a thing (in retrospect, pathetic). Part of me wondered what, if anything, I could still say about teaching, and the rest of me worried about what it meant that the other part of me was wondering about that (in retrospect, even more pathetic). A whole lot of me just knew I couldn't do it all, and so I didn't (in retrospect, totally smart).

When I started this blog I thought big, grandiose even. Although I formally planned to write only on the weekends, internally I wanted to top that and write three or four times a week. That's easier said and done when daylight only lasts until 4:00 p.m., I guess. And I secretly hoped for a readership numbering in the hundreds, with fans the country over. Clearly I ignored the need to market the blog in order to achieve this goal and also forgot that, simply put, teachers. are. busy.

But this week feels like time is once again on my side. And I'm remembering my perspective and bringing forcing into focus my good fortune, my real reasons for writing, and all the good things about teaching and learning that I want to memorialize here.

This morning I drove with a colleague to a meeting about a new evaluation system that our district will be piloting next year. We talked shop on the way over. And on the way back. Shop talk, and lots of it. One week out of school (excluding the three days of summer curriculum work already completed and the one more to get through), and there we were, already talking about next year, making plans to improve how we service our students, sharing best practices, and neither of us minded. Really, we were both pretty darned excited.

And that's why I'm back, really. I'm excited again. Not just going through the paces, but really and truly excited, and it isn't even July yet. Hiatus schmiatus - it's going to be a great summer!!