14

Another week has ended. With athletics (even volunteering for high school) totally behind me, it is hard to believe that there is so little time left in the year. I remember after two weeks when I said that I was one-eighteenth through with the year and after three weeks when I said that I was one-twelfth through the year, so on and so forth. Now, I am on the other side of the year looking the other way. Although it's turned into a habit, I am finding it harder and harder to tell people that I hate my job. Sure, I'm not jumping out of bed in the morning and whistling on my way there, but I feel like I've adapted, somehow. Would I sign on for another year? Quite doubtful, although it would be tempting if I really thought that anyone really wanted to make anything of the place. As a teacher, no matter where you are or what the circumstances, you tend to get attached to a fair portion of your students. Thus, as the countdown winds down, I find myself becoming as wistful as I am excited... sort of ambivalent, I guess. This ambivalence has replaced what I formerly cast as apathy or indifference... it is not that I don't care, but rather, I have a multitude of conflicted attitudes.

Next year, I'll be a full-time student and graduate assistant, and I'll probably be in my element, and I'll probably have a blast, but I'll miss the smiles, the cool handshakes that have become second-nature to me, and the jokes. I was reading the other night about St. John of Kronstadt, who said that he loved to be around children, because the image of God was more clear in them. Sometimes, there are those moments, such as today, when a kid who has the IQ of a wet towel came up to me and asked for a sheet of blank paper to draw on. The academic purist in me is often annoyed with this kid, but for a second, I saw a glint of a smile and a light in his eye and was able to see the image of God. I gave the boy a few sheets of paper and he went back to his desk to draw (he had finished his test). A moment like this won't help me teach him a lick more of US history, but it certainly helps my patience.

After school, I had a meeting with some of my student council officers about Teacher Appreciation Week, and we brought our proposals to the principal. After the kids left, me, my co-sponsor, the principal, the librarian, and Prince Rainbow all sat around and shot the breeze for over an hour. It was Prince Rainbow (nicknamed on the blog after a character in Watership Down) who recruited me to come to the school, then abandoned me once things went downhill. You know, it's kind of funny how on a Friday afternoon, tension goes away and people are able to joke around just like old times. The workplace ceases to matter, and people can just have fun and enjoy each others' company regardless of their professional opinions of each other.

I never imagined myself missing this place, but damn, I just might.