BACK TO SCHOOL

The students and I have successfully survived the first week of school.  Okay, for me it has been four days, and for the kids it has been three, but it is a seamless transition.  By Friday, even the students are saying how it seems like they've been in seventh grade all along. 

It is like we are all instantly comfortable with each other and the routines we are mastering.  Of course, we are flying by the seats of our pants this fall as a newly mandated but undefined pilot program is germinating in the classroom.  Not just my classroom, either.  As usual, my cohorts and I are doing the grunt work while we will get very little glory for our blood, sweat, and tears.

Honestly, though, being glorified is not first and foremost in the daily grind of teachers, although it is stupendous when it happens spontaneously.  On the third day, my last class breaks out into spontaneous cheering and clapping several times: for one student, for each other, and for the accomplishments of their entire grade in general. 

Apparently, they will celebrate anything. 

This is great news because I, too, like to celebrate anything and everything, and, for some strange reason, I find myself whistling lately.  Truly, for the last four days, I have been whistling anything, everything, nothing, and something: Armed Forces songs, classical music, toddler songs, music from the radio, hard rock, jazz, foreign songs...

It just happens; I cannot stop myself. Quite frankly, my whistling is driving me out of my mind.

It seems, though, that my whistling is simply an extension of the transition to a new school year.  On day one, I drove to work saying over and over again. "I don't want to go back.  I hate going back.  It gets worse every year.  Please, don't make me go back."  By day four, I am randomly whistling so incessantly that I have to really think about it to stop myself.  I whistle in the halls at school, in the car, around the house...

Damn you, positive school year!  You're ruining my foul mood!  Next thing I know I will wake up early on Saturday, and probably in a good mood, as well.  Here's to another school year of undue angst, unprepared teaching, endless whistling, and spontaneous cheering.