I CAN BREATHE AGAIN

What a year. What a damn year. If there is such a thing as a balanced universe, I will not have to teach in pandemic mode next fall. 

So far we have been able to remove our masks for the last two days of school, which have been teachers only in attendance. We have also been instructed to leave maps of our rooms for September, meaning I probably won’t be rolling a cart madly from uniformly-set-up room to uniformly-set-up room.

I took some of my end-of-year time to do two important things for my own mental health: I cleared off my mobile teaching cart, and I moved furniture back to where it belongs.

Oh, sure, the furniture thing is physically unnecessary because the janitorial staff will be taking everything out to wax floors, anyway. However, moving the furniture back to the way it looked on March 13, 2020, the day we locked up our schools for the pandemic, has been mentally rewarding. I don’t simply want to go back to a school of normalcy; I wanted to leave a school of normalcy, as well.

If my teacher cart is still there in the fall in my room, taunting me and mocking me, and, if I am not using it for teaching room to room, I may store books on it. I may turn it into some kind of bizarre shrine. I may use it for demolition derby demonstrations.

I am stepping away from supervisory duties. I say that out loud and in print so no one, not even me-myself-and-I, can talk me into reneging on my extra-curricular resignation. I believe that I have at least one more career in me before I keel over and croak, and being someone’s boss is not it, hence why I always stopped at “assistant manager.” I like the paperwork, the details, the balancing, the minutiae no one else cares to do; I hate the directing and monitoring. If I could just be Leadership Paper-Pusher, I’d stay on forever.  

Well, except for the summer work. I am taking this summer off from school work and pouring my heart into plotting my next career move.

What a year. What a damn year.  Finally, after fifteen-plus months, I (literally) can breathe again.