Well, that's actually not true since I have already put in one and a half days at school that involved meeting with students and sitting in official professional development sessions (including the mindful whisperer who made us all crazy and anxious). I guess my break ended a week ago. But, this is the supposedly "official" end of summer for me and my colleagues. By the time you read this, I will either be getting ready to leave the house, on my way to school, already in meetings, or on my way to do all those pesky errands I have ignored, errands like resupplying my OTC meds and getting my own personal stash of antibacterial hand wash. I am not going to spend my last free day running errands. No way!
Instead, I am spending the entire day in my pajamas (yoga pants and an old shirt) and doing the schoolwork that I have been walking past all summer. I re-edit and re-send some grammar tests that I tried to edit last week but was probably sipping wine at the time. I think they're okay now. I type up some stuff for the interactive notebooks the students will be doing this year, and then I add it to the stuff I already have prepped for the exemplar versions. I'm not just taking on one giant change to my curriculum this year; I'm taking on two major changes, and the end result had better be more prep work and less correcting. I don't mind the creative side of this job, but the general maintenance side of it blows chunks big time.
After I print out several copies of everything, I start putting the exemplar interactive notebooks together. These will be evolving works in progress, but there is some groundwork to be done, like tables of contents and such. I need glue sticks, and, luckily, I have about a dozen half-dried out glue sticks in my personal desk here at home. I start rooting around in the drawer when I discover something even better.
I find RUBBER CEMENT. Best of all, it's not even dried out and rubbery; it is still gooey and snotty and smells to high heaven. Yup, this is the stuff of old-school projects that we could all use to legally get high.
I end up using all of the rubber cement that's left in the bottle, but I get the exemplars all set up and ready to go. I have a slight headache, but for some strange reason, I'm very content and don't have the least care in the world that I have wasted an entire "last day" on work-related junk. As a matter of fact, when my head clears, I might even pour myself a glass of wine or make myself a Caffe Moka (hard stuff) shake -- I am supposed to be upping my calcium intake, after all.
Yes, the work is done, my bag is packed for school, and I'm ready to relax. Bonus: I'm still in my pajamas at dinner time. Truly, it's a shame I'll have to shower and get dressed in normal clothes tomorrow. Oh well. 183 more work days to go and then I'll get a re-do.
So long, summer. I miss you terribly when you're gone.
