Soak It Up
Yesterday, I spent the last couple of hours of the last day of the 2025-26 school year outside helping with some fun “field day” activities for 160 sixth and seventh graders. It started out cloudy after a little rain shower, thankfully not enough to switch our plans. Then, the sun broke through and it warmed up considerably. Cloudy with a shower. Hot, humid and sunny. The weather changes pretty quickly. So does a school day. No two days are alike for me in my role as Middle School Counselor.
I appreciate the ebbs and flows of a school day and a school year. The shifting and changing. I have now been through 38 years of that ebbing and flowing as an educator and counselor. My first ten years were as a classroom teacher, teaching high school social studies. The next two were as an elementary school counselor. And now twenty-six years working with 11-14 year-olds. The years go quickly, though some hours, days, and weeks can tend be long. Such is a school year and such is life.
The kids brought their energy in different ways and each group came to my station with a little different tone. That is what I appreciate about this age. It is an ongoing study in human psychology. Plenty has changed in the decades since I started as a baby teacher. And much has also stayed the same.
Our society and culture evolving, and I would argue, devolving, in ways that have impacted our younger members. The developmental stages of pre-teens and teens haven’t changed. The philosophy and approach I bring to my work is flexible with the changing times. It starts with active listening, and helping young people become more aware of what they may be thinking and feeling in a current situation, and how that is shaping their actions. Awareness is empowering.
They have pressures I never could have imagined when I was their age, and they also have it “easier” in many ways. I would argue that this “easier” is harming them—eroding work ethic and selling our kids short in terms of what they can and can’t do. (These are topics for a deeper dive some other time.)
I am not fully exhausted at the end of this school year. This is a good thing. I strive to bring good energy to my interactions with young people and the amazing adults who teach them. I give myself and others reminders of this grateful energy in many different ways. One way is putting a few stickers on my computer cover. From depression awareness and suicide prevention to slowing down and noticing the gifts in ourselves, each other, nature, and this day. I am already looking forward to year #39, but I will take my summer days first. Slow down. Soak it up. Onward!
