Because of our snow days last week, our new semester didn't start on time, so now tomorrow is the day. When I was in high school, there was no such thing as a "block schedule" semester calendar, so you stayed in the same classes from August until May. As a teacher, this mid-year changeover has always felt odd to me.
For some reason today I was thinking about the feel of this new semester versus the feel of a new school year in August. There is a touch of hope and optimism attached to the newness, but it is far more muted than it normally is after summer's end. Of course, it is the middle of freakin' winter, which is hardly conducive to joyous moods. Also, students and teachers alike have just finished last semester in a rush of activity, emotion, and exam angst, so none of us feel completely recharged to start over again, I suspect.
There is an upside, I think, in that I can still be hopeful about what lies ahead, but in a more realistic (chastened?) way. When I'm away from students for all those weeks of summer, I tend to get a little too "pie in the sky" about all my big plans and all the GREAT THINGS THAT WILL HAPPEN IN CLASS EVERY DAY!! AHHHHH!!!
Yeah. Well, some of those things did happen, so I'm thankful for them, and for the tiny miracles that will somehow occur even in this less-than-eagerly-anticipated semester about to begin... wish me luck, as always.
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FOR THE STRAIGHT WAY WAS LOST."
"Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school." - Jaques, As You Like It
(Oh yeah... the views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of my school or school district. Thought you would like to know.)
"...I came to myself in a dark wood,
FOR THE STRAIGHT WAY WAS LOST."
About Me
- School Master P
- North Carolina
- I'm a born and raised North Carolinian, and live in the east-central part of the state. My average, but deviously ambitious family includes my one lovely wife , my one darling son (8 yrs. old), and (most ambitious of all) a no-doubt mean little girl born in October (surprise, surprise!). I have completed seven years of teaching high school English. I spent my first five years of teaching at a small rural school, and am now teach at a much bigger school in a bedroom community several miles outside of Raleigh.
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