Back to School

When most people think of summer vacation and the inevitable, eventual first day back at school, they think of the kids. They imagine children, at bursting from the doors of the school toward freedom at the end of the school year every spring, and dutifully filing back into the classrooms once their summer has come to an end. But what they don't tell you is that teachers feel exactly the same way.

After nine months of trying to educate, inform, and – when all else fails – simply corral hundreds of children every day, the end of the school year is as much a blessing for the faculty as it is for the students. And the intervening summer months between school terms is just as much of a break for teachers, many of whom need the time away from the classroom even more than their students!

As she pulled into a space in the staff parking lot, Miss Sorensen was thankful that she didn't teach at a high school. Her job as an elementary school teacher may mean having to deal with behavioral issues and trying to reason with younger children, but at least the parking was ample and she didn't have to worry about her students careening around in motor vehicles. She drove an old Toyota Avalon, but that Avalon was at least safe from the mayhem of recently-licensed teenage motorists.

While this was the first day back for students, Miss Sorensen and the other teachers spent all weekend in their classrooms, putting up decorations and preparing their rooms. Her muscles still ached from lugging all those boxes of books and supplies back and forth between her apartment, her car, and her classroom. It was silly that they made the teachers clear out their rooms entirely at the end of the year; it just made for one big headache getting it all back into its proper place in time to greet the new students.

This morning, all the teachers were there early for a staff meeting. The students wouldn't arrive for another couple hours, but there were more than enough administrative duties to completely fill that time. The Special Education department would brief them on which students needed what additional services; the administration would remind everyone of all the school policies; and the support staff of counselors, psychologists, nurses, librarians, janitors, and tech support would reiterate what they were available for, and what they needed from each of the teachers in order to ensure a smooth year.

It was funny; when Miss Sorensen first went to school to become a teacher, she thought it was all about the students and the classroom. She thought she'd spend her school year lesson planning, tutoring students, and grading papers. What a shock it had been when she got her first teaching job and had learned how much administration goes into educating a class of students. She routinely had to take paperwork home, and it wasn't the fun kind with student writings and assignments. Those would be infinitely preferable to case files and district memos!

Still, at the end of the day, being a teacher was a gift. The administration and the bureaucracy and the squabbling over the increasingly tight annual budget aside, it was a joy to educate children; to see them develop in front of your very eyes as they learned new things and steadily grew from babies into children, and onward along the path toward young adulthood. There were few things more satisfying than to see a struggling student overcome a difficult problem and arrive at the correct solution, or to see the joy with which kids experienced the world and interacted with it.

Miss Sorensen had only been teaching for a few years, but she fell more and more in love with her job each and every year. Now, after the tearful goodbyes to her students at the end of last year, and after a summer full of relaxation and rejuvenation, she headed into the building with a sense of excitement and energy that probably rivaled that of most of her students.

First days were always exciting, and Miss Sorensen couldn't wait to see what this one had in store.

She had a feeling it was going to be a good year.


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