9 Months

First, a confession. Teaching is not just a 9 month gig. It's 10. August it begins, the middle of June it ends -- so really, 10 and half months. After 21 years (almost) of doing it, I am still surprised by the monthly cycle of feelings.

August -- a bit of excitement, a bit of resignation. I hold on for the onslaught by going to Office Depot and buying supplies...lots and lots of supplies. Buying pencils and markers and new scissors and paper is a high. I touch everything first, roll them around in my hands, smell them, feel the weight of them. Then I organize them into containers and boxes, throwing out the old pens without caps or the yellowed construction paper and replacing it with the new. Obsessively. Compulsively.

September -- Overwhelmed, exhausted, a hermit. Friends don't hear from me. It's go to work, teach all day, get to know my new students while grieving those who have moved on, moved up, and then coming home to eat too much and fall asleep too early. Septemeber is the month when my To Do list is miles longer than my Done list -- I cross something off only to add five more items.

October -- My grief has passed and I start to fall in love with the new group of kids. I'm still exhausted. I still have a million phone calls to make, emails to send, field trips to set up, and organizational systems to get going like my gradebook (entering names) and my address book (double checking all the parent contact information) and sorting out which kids are on meds and which kids should be, and on top of it all there is an Open House to plan where I must explain 9 months of work in a half hour or less.

November -- More relaxed. I get to see my friends again and hope they are not pissed that I've been absent for so long. And there's our first real break -- Thanksgiving -- to look forward to, but there's also parent conferences to organize and the demands of the institution that have NOTHING to do with teaching, but are required any way. Paperwork and documentation, all of which sits on a shelf in someone's office and does not make me a better teacher or my job any easier. Still, there's turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes and four glorious days when I can just lie around and relax hoping that I don't get sick with the latest cold now that I've let down my guard. There are also papers to grade and I never, despite my best intention, get them down before break or at the beginning of break. Instead, I'm up late on Sunday evening before we go back to school cursing my procrastination, cursing the obligation.

December --It whizzes by and my sights are set on break again. I know the kids, I know what they're capable of, we're in a rhythm, all is well and then two weeks to be with family and friends, to go skiing and get lost in rest and food.

January -- What am I doing? There's so much to get done and so little time left. June is now in sight, though really still 6 months away. January is when we hit our stride, but then there's report cards and more phone calls and emails. Then there's the kids who begin to irritate me, the ones who haven't grown out of their insecurities or their learned helplessness. There's conversations about courtesy and kindness, about comfort zones and organization. There's the kids Ilove to see every day and the ones who turn my hair gray.

It's like that old joke -- Did you hear about the guy who decided to swim across the Atlantic? He got half way and decided he couldn't do it so he swam back.

You're in the middle of it and swimming back is just as exhausting as swimming forward.

February -- I start to think about other professions. Things aren't as stressful, I've hit a rhythm, I know where I've been and where I'm going...now it's just the day in and day out demands of teaching and all the institutional demands on top of it. There are times, in the middle of the lesson when I love my job, when it's all going so damn well I'm on top of the world and there are times when it stumbles and I'm spending more time being a peacemaker between kids who don't get along or families who are struggling. In February, the kids realize there aremore of them than there is of me so they don't listen as well, they don't want to please as much, they'd rather just talk with each other than take part in the lesson. I start to wish for a job that requires less of me, a job I don't take home, a job I can just do and not have to think about all the time -- like farming or retail or baking. A job without people. Just me and a brick and some mortar. Just me and a shovel and pile of dirt. A job that requires no head, just body.

March -- One of the longest months. No breaks, but there's sunshine. And there's rain, but it's warmer rain. And there's light. No more walking to work in the dark and walking home in the dark. It's a month of resignation. So many plans of all the new things I'd do this year and now the realization I can't get them all done. I spend March letting it all go.

April -- Another break and now I'm at the top of the hill. At the end of break it's all downhill. The kids feel it too. There's more antsy behavior. There are more disputes. There are more poor choices, but there's also more laughter. In the middle of spring break I'm glad I'm a teacher. No one else gets these kind of vacations, though most of vacation time is about sleeping and recovering from working too damn hard. And then the late Sunday night at the end of break grading papers again, cursing myself for not finishing them up a week earlier.

May -- THE longest month and I'm just holding on. I look back at the year and know we've done as much as we could and I spend most of May forgiving myself for not getting it all done. May is when I think I will turn in my letter of retirement. May is when I dream of working at a place where my job is all that is required of me and I don't have to play referee and I don't have to call home and talk with angry or confused parents and I don't have to feel guilty on my days off that the papers aren't graded or the lessons aren't planned.

June -- Coasting. Riding the wave of the year until the end. Ready for it to be over and have nothing to do but whatever I choose to do. Ready to start vacation because I know, in 6 weeks, I'll be back in the cycle, rolling around through the emotions that are predictable and inevitable. The things I love about teaching all tumbled together with the things I hate about teaching. Forgiving myself for what doesn't go well and dreaming about ways to make it better.

I don't want to be a bitter old teacher. I don't want to be lazy and uninspiring. But I can see the appeal after 21 years of giving it all I've got. 9 months...just like gestation. Over and over being born, birthed into the same world. Tossed around in the womb I've chosen as my career.

Push. Breathe. Push. Breathe.