All Good Things Come to an End

Last week was my first week back at school.  Boooooooo!!!!!!  Hisssssssssss!!!!!  Students don’t come back to school until August 18, but we had to go back early for a two week training and then our regular pre-planning the week of August 11.  It’s just no fair, I tell you!

I spent all last week teaching other teachers about digital technology in the classroom.  My master’s degree was in Educational Leadership and my focus area was in technology in education, so digital curriculum is a passion of mine.  I’ve been lucky to be at a school that is part of a digital pilot program in our county, so all of my students each have their own iPad.  It has made teaching so very different, and I really love helping other teachers find their niche for technology in their classrooms, too.

But teaching teachers is a lot more intense than teaching middle schoolers.  For one thing, these are my peers, so there is a level of pressure with this kind of teaching that I don’t normally have in my classroom.  It has also been more demanding to lead this training because I have been out of the habit of teaching all summer.  Teaching requires stamina.  It takes a lot of energy to get through an entire day of growing minds, and when you’ve been out of the classroom for any significant length of time, you have to build that stamina back up.  Which meant that by 3:00 every day last week, my mind was fried and I could barely form simple sentences.  I was a wreck.

Thank goodness my mother-in-law, Jackie, came to town to stay with the kids while I was at school.  She took care of all of us, actually.  She cooked and cleaned and did my laundry and dishes.  It was a huge help to have her here.  Not only did the kids love spending time with her, but it allowed me to focus 100% on what was going on at school and on my blog.

I know I didn’t blog last week, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t working!  I had an awesome opportunity to drive around a Chevrolet Traverse last week and record my experience in video and pictures.  I’ll be sharing about that adventure in a two-part video post soon.  I can’t wait to show you what kind of adventures we had!

With the start of another school year, it is the end of another summer.  This one was significantly shorter for me because of all the trainings I had to attend and then lead myself, but the kids and I still packed in all the joy and excitement we could!  I find myself sitting at school, daydreaming about our trips to the beach or lazy afternoons in our pool.  We still have more summer left to celebrate, and you can bet our weekends are going to be squeezed until the last drop of summertime falls.  But there’s just sometime about going back to school that sort of seals the summertime away.

So for now, I’m soaking up the sunshine that is left while I plan for the upcoming school year.  I’m living in the lovely in between of summer and fall right now.  That place where summer is still on your skin, but fall is all around you in the school supplies, back-to-school paperwork, and shopping for new shoes.  I’m sorry to see summer go, but I’m ready to welcome fall.