Tomorrow morning, the alarm clock will awaken me. For the past two months, I have been awakened not by an alarm clock, but by a toddler asking, “Daddy, pass me the ‘mote, please.” (Chloe climbs into our bed each morning and begins her day by watching cartoons.) Tomorrow, it will be either the unpleasant buzzing or the first part of whatever CD I happen to choose. I will probably go with the CD; it is less grating.
Tomorrow morning, I officially begin the ’06 – ’07 school year. Students don’t come until Thursday, but I have three days of inservice beginning tomorrow. (To get an idea of how teachers really feel about inservice, imagine a three-day-long root canal. Without anesthesia. Come to think of it, inservice wouldn’t be so bad if I was hooked up to a tank of laughing gas. I wonder what it would take to get one of those?)
I know that some of you reading this are thinking that I should shut up my whining. After all, I do get those two months off. May I politely remind you that I don’t get paid for those two months? Yes, I get a paycheck during the summer, but like everyone else, I only get paid for the time I work. Since I don’t work during the summer, I don’t get paid. It is not a paid holiday, it is simply time away from work. And in the case of the summer of ’06, it was time away from work, but time spent workng on graduate studies, workshops, and several days of inservice.
At any rate, I am back to the saltmine tomorrow. And you know what? I am excited. I truly am. I miss my students, and I miss my classroom. Thursday, I will meet approximately 75 students that I will be investing my life into for the next six months. I will be trying to teach them language skills, but more importantly, I will be teaching them about life. We will discuss life, love, danger, fate… and oh-so-much more.
I can hardly wait.