As I draw my 15th year as a teacher to a close next week, all I can say is BLAHH! I enjoy being a teacher and introducing my students to new concepts such as being quiet when I ask for it, doing homework when I assign it, and not rubbing their pencils against their desks trying to start Indian style fire pits. However, this has probably been my most trying year as a 2nd grade teacher, and teaching 2nd grade has been my greatest 5 years of my career.
Oh, I've had more trying than this year! In my 3rd year of teaching, I was teaching 5th grade in a portable that had trouble remembering there was an AC unit on the roof, making us all psychotic before Halloween. My 9th year was in a 4th grade room after a stressful 2 weeks of emergency moving to a new apartment and therefore having no prep time in my new classroom at a new school. By November, I was beat and I was used to having Novembers off in a year-round school. By January it was hell and by May I was ready to quit teaching to be an accountant.
Those 2 years were horrific by any means, and certainly make this year look like a 6oz filet mignon!However, even this year was a challenge by 2nd grade standards. In the past, the formula was easy. I told kids to do something, and after repeating my directions 40-50 times, they got it. This year, it took at least 100 times and that was on a good day.
I'd love to blame the lack of attention on solar flares, the plight of the Chargers, Wayne Newton, anything external. However, the problem goes deeper than that. With a few exceptions, the parenting has really declined. Getting my kids' parents to force them do homework at gunpoint is no longer easy. Parents also seem to have a highly exaggerated sense of their children's abilities, thinking that a child in 2nd grade reading at a Kindergarten level will be Mensa next year.
However, all will be once again coming to an end. We are getting ready to stage our annual end-of-year play. It contains a song that always brings a tear to my eye called "Things Change". That is truer this year than any before this because my own daughter is in the play. She is getting bigger all the time as well as smarter and sassier.
After the play, its one more day then it's all over. I say goodbye to another set of kids I will see occasionally in the halls in the next few years, lucky if half of them are left by the time they reach 5th grade. For some legal reason, I have to keep my daughter.
I do have to say that all of my 2nd graders through the years have been the best kids I have taught. During my years of teaching 5th, maybe 1 or 2 were memorable in a good way. 1st grade is a blur, though I keep in touch with one of the kids fairly regularly. 4th grade seems like a twilight zone 2-year period, though the second year wasn't too bad.
Now what? Oh yes, another blur in the year called summer. My first real summer vacay as a teacher came in 2011 when I ended my year early to become an accountant (yeah, that would have involved more schooling, no thank you). From 2003-10, I enjoyed sporadic 3-4 week periods of break in the year-round system ( no more of that!). From 2012-16 we took a plane trip each summer. Florida, Colorado Springs, Rapid City, Tennessee, and Michigan were our respective destinations. This year, however, we decided to sacrifice pressurized air in favor of the open road for a week-long road trip in late June. After that, we have July and a week in August and then it's back to the grind.
As we are starting early to end early, we lose 2 weeks of break. Some feel gipped by that, but I just shrug. At the 2 month mark I'm ready for action...time to rub some pencils together!
