As we approach October, life and work are slowing down ever-so-slightly. I'm feeling the rhythm again and my days are spent teaching children and my nights are spent training Rubin. Rubin is a far easier student in many regards, but I'm slowly getting to know my new crop of students -- their quirks, their comfort zones, their pet peeves, their rough edges -- so it doesn't feel as foreign as it did in the beginning of September.
It's taken me 22 years of teaching to realize I'm good at it and just when I start to own that, I'm feeling the need to change. I can do this work, this teaching work, but every year I am amazed by the amount of energy it saps from me. I already have my first cold of the year and though it hasn't walloped me, I feel drained and in need of sleep/rest/a vacation.
Meanwhile, I've been lucky enough to take Rubin to school with me 3 days a week. He loves it, my students love it, and the rest of the school (faculty, staff, other students, parents) are falling in love with him. He is darn cute, if I do say so myself, but I realized yesterday that part of my "exhaustion" is keeping my eye on the students and what I'm teaching them as well as keeping an eye on a 7 month old puppy whose patience runs thin at times.
Today he spent the whole day with me at school. This is a rarity. Generally, I take him home at lunch and let him get some sleep and then retrieve him in the afternoon for a long walk. Somehow that never happened today so he was with me the entire time. He should be tired. He got only a smidge of sleep and was ever-alert as the girls moved through their day dropping pens and shuffling their feet, all of which perks up Rubin's ears.
While I know it's going to be a good year, I am so ready for it to be my last year of teaching in the classroom. I'm not resentful. I'm not bitter or burned out. I'm just done. I need a new challenge in my life and now that everything is lined up with the dog trainer, I'm ready to just begin and not simply begin in tiny increments.
I suppose I am an impatient person. Okay, let me state that more as fact than as a pondering: I can be and often am an impatient person. Not with my students, not even with Rubin, but definitely with myself. Some say I'm a perfectionist though that's hard for me to see, but I will admit that I'm the first one to beat up on myself for any hint of failure and the one who punishes myself longer and harder than anyone else who may have been affected by my "mistakes."
It's funny how, if I were my own teacher -- in other words, if I were a 5th grader in my class -- I'd know exactly how to deal with me. It would be endless positive talk and lots of humor and lots of encouragement to make mistakes and be myself. But I'm much better at giving the lesson than I am at receiving it and so, I grow impatient when the world doesn't spin on the axis I've set forth.
I'm hoping October brings more rhythm and more patience. I'm hoping October, contrary to its normal work, is a time of sowing the seeds of change. I'm hoping October washes away some exhaustion and allows me to fully breathe in each day as it comes, finding patience with each and every breath.
Meanwhile, it's teaching in the mornings and Rubin in the evenings and a sprinkling of chocolate in between.
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