It’s a quiet, gray, rainy day,  the kind of day that calls for reading books and taking naps.  There’s a solitary bird sitting in the freshly filled bird feeder and as I watch him I wonder if birds can be introverts and if he just loves his time alone.  The rain is cleaning the roads and sidewalks and refreshing the plants and the grass.  It’s a nice change after several weeks of sunshine.  Did I just say that?  Well, like I’ve said before, it’s in the contrast that we feel the most emotion and the most appreciative.  Anyway, it’s the day before the first day of school, and while it doesn’t feel like it, for me it’s the last day of summer.

Oh sure, summer is officially here until September 22, but by then we’ll have been in school for over a month and it certainly won’t feel like summer.  So, how will I spend my day, this last day of summer?  Will I spend it napping and reading?  After all, my better half is in the office again today, writing more marching band drill (tis the season), so despite the fact that we’re in the same place, I really have the day and the place to myself.

The day before school is a day of preparation for me, a day to be ready to walk out the door tomorrow and kick into gear for another school year.  This begins my 29th year of teaching and so my classroom is ready, the seating charts are finished, the beginning of year presentation about procedures and expectations is ready to go and hopefully I’ll have time to do the activity I have planned for afterwards.  As far as school is concerned, this girl is ready.  So for me, the preparation today is for ME, the savoring of the last day of choosing when I eat and for how long, using the bathroom when I want, and setting my own agenda for the day.  It’s the little things.

Tomorrow brings immediate, intense structure, dictated by others and revolving around children, the antithesis of how I’ve been living the last eleven weeks.  It begins another year of working to strike a balance between work, home, family and service to an organization that strives to serve the needs of music teachers and their students.  It’s an exercise of weighing priorities, learning when to say no when necessary, working to effectively structure my days in order to get things accomplished on time.  It’s also a time when self care is a struggle, when getting enough sleep, eating right and taking time to be alone and regroup is hard and sometimes impossible.  It all confirms that I, that WE as teachers, more than earned those eleven weeks.

I’m not alone in this day before preparation.  There are thousands of music teachers across the country who have already begun rehearsals to get ready for the school year, teachers who have spent hours getting their rooms ready (if the rooms are available to make ready), teachers who have attended professional development, worked on curriculum, written lesson plans, and taught music camps.  Teachers who have not just prepared the day before school starts, but the entire summer, tweaking things they did the year before, learning how to do things better, working to engage their students even more this year than last.  For so many, this day before is the culmination of work done throughout the summer, always with the student in mind.

So here is to my fellow teachers, some of whom have already begun, some who like me, begin tomorrow, some who begin in the next few weeks.  We have the hardest, most rewarding, most exhausting, most important job in the world besides parenting, and that’s teaching.  The future is always in our hands as we equip young people to find their place in the world to hopefully make it a better place.  As I listen to the birds singing outside, I think about how lucky we are as music teachers.  We help students to create, perform, connect and respond to music.  My wish for you is that you find your balance this year, that you have great friends and family to lean on and that you build strong relationships with your students.  Enjoy the day before!