Welcome back

    Emotions tend to run high for teachers before they start back to work. I have a friend that confessed to having nightmares of the first day of school. I myself have had a few dreams about going back. The last of which had me walking around to classes just like the kids and panicking about how I was not ready for the year.  This takes me back to the dreams that we all have before school starts when we are kids. The dreams where you had left your pants at home, or showed up to school without any supplies. The feeling of panic as you move into the next year is the same that the teacher's feel when they take to the classroom for the first time. This is a really uncertain time for us, and as the first actual day of school approaches we begin our nerotic rituals. My mom use to work in a school and a friend of her's use to say that every year she would stay awake before the start of school and have a little panic attack about the first day of school.
    This is my last post before I go back to work. School may not start until the 22nd of this month for us, but I have to report back for a week of meetings and training. (More on the joy of that next week) The uncertainty for both teachers and students are the same. We both worry about the class and if the students will be a good group, or a group from hell. We also worry about what the year has in store for us. The sense of panic eventually subsides when the semester is over, only to be replaced with the next semester.
  So as the summer winds down, and we work towards a new school year here is to optimism. Here is to a new year that is full of new experiences which will be hopefully more good than bad.  This is a unique feeling, one that captures exactly what we do. I have never had this range of emotions about any other job, and do not think that I will.

"If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers." -Edgar W. How

Next week: The perfect week a school with no children.