MOVING DAY

Turns out it's harder to leave the old school than I thought it would be. My school is undergoing both construction and re-struction (remodeling) over the next year, and the entire middle school will be relocating to the old high school for a year. 

Honestly I never thought that our 1960's era school was in such bad shape, and this belief is confirmed when I tour our temporary digs, which are in need of more than a facelift.  We have the best janitorial staff in the universe, so after every single vacation and often times just because, our school has always been shiny and spiffy and polished.  Even on its worst day, it still seemed fine. 

I have a fondness for the cinder block walls of the old schools.  When I started elementary school, my first classroom was cinder block.  My second one was in the old wooden part of the school, the original school house part, which was also very nice, too.

Maybe I just like school buildings. 

Leaving this building today is difficult.  I am fine all day until around 11:00 a.m.  Then I begin getting sentimental.  I've been in several rooms in this building.  I started in A-4, then shared A-4 with A-27 and A-33.  Then I moved to B-8-B (which eventually became a hallway when the new construction started and the mods moved), and then upstairs to A-22, then back down to A-4, then to A-6, and finally to A-8 (my favorite room because it has a little stage in it, which is really a constructed platform hiding something awful like electrical wires or a sink hole or old grade staff members).

Around 11:21, when the kids are dismissed, the feeling creeps up even more.  By 11:30, I kind of don't want to leave the building at all because it's going to be gone soon.  Well, not gone gone, just gone as I know it.  I was hired here right out of grad school when I decided this would be a career

change for me.  This building put its faith in me, and I feel like I'm letting it down somehow.

True, I draw on its recovered blackboards, and I let the kiddos write all over the plywood walls.  We give the room and the school a wonderful send-off, writing precepts and good advice on the cinder block walls of the gym.  But still.  This has been my home for fifteen years.  Plus, I'm being moved to another team, so there are even more changes afoot along with the move.

It's sad.  And it's happy.  And it's bad.  And it's good.

Here's to my final classroom, how it looks on moving day and how much I'm actually going to miss it -- plywood prison and all.