Today is one of those days....the end of another school year. Saying goodbye to those little faces one more time and preparing my classroom for the summer is always bitter sweet. I won't say I ever cry over missing those babies, but it is somewhat sad. However, today I was glad to see a few of them go! (wink wink)
This year ends so many parts of what is "normal" for me. The end of a seven year partnership and of teaching social studies. I can truly say I loved them both. However I know change is good. As I packed up parts of my room, took down my world map, shredded personal papers of my students, and sent duplicate copies of papers to the recycle bin, it reminded me how final the end of this year was. I then walked in my partner's room to see blank walls and bare bulletin boards. Gone were all signs of the life that had been in that room. Gone were some the smiley faces that decorated the walls. Gone were all the familiar things that use to welcome me. It all felt so cold and unknown. It was like a great big exclamation point on the end of this year.
Tomorrow will be a new beginning. A new partner will move next door to begin setting up shop for the next school year. As I leave my room tomorrow for a quiet (yea right) summer of making wedding plans and catching up with house work, I know that the new year will bring a new beginning for me. As always, new faces of anxious little ones ready to learn....at least we want them to be ready to learn. This year will bring Chelsea, my baby girl, to my school as a 5th grader. It will bring a new set of partners....a team of 4 teachers this time. It will bring a new teaching assignment of reading only and with two classes of honor students and two of my regular/esl babies. It will mean i will have a senior in high school for a daughter and another daughter married. The fall will be full of change in my life. Change I am not usually good at. To embrace this time in my life and force myself to a place of confidence with everything I know turned upside down, is the hardest thing I may ever do.
Truth is I am sad. I am grieving the loss of my friendship with my partner. As much as this partnership needed to end. It needed to end for my sanity and for her to finally see that some things had to change. Even though there have been good days in our 7 years teaching together, I have had enough of the bad. I have carried so many burdens that have not been mine and cared for so many things that I don't really know how to just take care of me or just my class. I am sad. I have cried and could easily cry now as I think about the emptiness of the room next to me and the missing friend. But as I look forward instead of back, I see a time where I don't have to shield or guard one person from another. I see a time where I can laugh and joke around and not be criticized by my choice in friends and activities. I look forward to wanting to go to work and be around the people I work with instead of tip toeing around my own classroom to keep the peace. I see this new beginning as a new chance at living my life.
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