A friend texted me yesterday to tell me hi–she saw me walking up the hill. She said I look taller.
I think she’s right.
Knowing I”m not going back to school next week has literally lifted me. I loved teaching. So much. I adored my students. I love our high school. It was amazing to be there with my own kids. And I’m so glad I’m not going back.
The last two years have been rough. Our state and district chose to protect and prioritize kids’ time in classrooms, which means that we did school almost every day of 2020/21 and 2021/22. When Covid numbers grew really high in fall of 2020, we shut down for two long weekends. Otherwise, we were masked and in class. All the time. It was probably what was best for kids. And that was exhausting. Both the masking and the constantly policing masks, and the emotional toll it took to do a job like teaching without ever receiving the reward of seeing kids smile at you. The understanding that if we teachers got sick, we’d be both endangering our students and letting down the school.
And somehow, last year was even harder. Maybe it was circumstance. Maybe it was culture. Maybe I’m just getting old. But whatever it was, I was grateful to realize that it was a good year to be my last. There are sacrifices here. I didn’t qualify for retirement. Our district requires 20 years or being 55, and I really don’t have that many teaching years left in me. My income has been pretty instrumental in our family’s financial survival for most of the last ten years. It was important for me to be needed. I loved being in the know.
But now I’m a fulltime writer.
That looks very different from being a fulltime teacher. It happens earlier. It ends sooner. It doewsn’t require pants. The books I read as a writer are different than the books I read as a teacher. I have to look at more numbers and create more spreadsheets and moderate different kinds of group conversations. I nap more. I go outside.
And I don’t feel the crushing pressure of the Last Week of July. Somehow that last week of July has been, for a decade, a week of impending ending. Last week of freedom. Last week of nobody’s schedule but mine. And now I don’t have it.
And apparently it’s making me stand up straighter. Look taller. Appear lighter.
I’ll take it.