Meetings began Monday after a great district wide pep rally of sorts.  After the meeting at school, I had another meeting with colleagues about practicum students, dashed home for dinner and worked on a few other assignments.  Tuesday, I was up bright and early for a lovely breakfast provided by our administration and then sat through more meetings, worked in my room and out to celebrate my son’s birthday.  Into bed a bit earlier, I was at our professional development across town at 7:45 this morning, grabbed some lunch on the way to school and worked in my room until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more.  I walked out the door when the bell rang, went straight home and took an hour and a half nap.  Why am I so tired?

Other teachers I’ve talked to have shared similar stories.  Everyone is taking naps and going to bed early.  I mean honestly, all we’re doing is sitting in meetings and preparing our rooms, so what is it we’re talking about that may be wearing us out?  We have spent time looking at ways to teach life skills to students in a way that is fun and motivational.  We’ve looked at ways to increase achievement academically for our students.  We’ve talked about building relationships with our kids, spending time one on one with those kids who may need it the most.  And we’ve talked about what to do in the case of emergencies of all kinds, evacuations, lock downs and lock ins, all the while knowing that in the case of the real deal, we’ll have to use our best judgement to keep our kids safe.

I’ve climbed up and down chairs to put things up on the walls, created a circle of sit spots on the floor (thank goodness for marching band!), moved flip forms, arranged instruments, unboxed new equipment, cleaned out cabinets, created calendars, put together choir contracts and t-shirt order forms, filled out other forms…. you get the idea.  Ok, maybe now I see why I’m tired.

The scary thing is that it’s not even close to being finished.  Oh sure, the room is basically done with just a few little details to do, but open house it tomorrow night and on top of the hours put into preparing for that and the first day on Monday, we’ll spend another hour and a half at an open house, greeting parents, old and new students, keeping kids off of instruments and equipment, answering questions about band, strings and choir, where they can get piano lessons and rent instruments.

So once preparations are done and school gets into a routine, it gets easier, right?  No, the prep time is just easing us into the rest of the 184 days we have left.  This pace will not slow down until the very last day of school sometime at the end of May.  Teachers will attempt to juggle all of the duties of teaching, all of the after school commitments, the constant prep, adjusting, and communications with families and still maintain relationships with their own families and work at home.

The long lunches and bathroom breaks whenever we feel the urge are over, replaced with a regimented daily schedule which is a true test of endurance.  Those of us who are veterans know what’s coming and as I look at all the new teachers who have joined us this year, I know I also have a responsibility to check in on them occasionally to make sure they’re not losing their minds to the point where they don’t want to do this anymore.  Those young teachers won’t understand that there will be rewards for all of this work eventually.  There will be those kids who will come back and share how their lives were changed because of them.  There will be those kids who choose to go into teaching because they were inspired by them.  And that’s enough for all of us to continue this crazy lifestyle called teaching because it DOES make a difference.  It also means that making a difference is tiring.  So as I begin year 28,  here’s to embracing naps and going to bed early.