Winding Down

Living gratefully today, I appreciate students, colleagues and parents who I have had heartening conversations and shared smiles with this school year. I give thanks for the variety of ways joys, challenges, and learning take place in a school in a year’s time.

I was driving home yesterday in road construction that is winding down, but still slowing my drive down. I wished I would have gone the alternate route like I have been doing. Yet, as I creeped along with my fellow travelers for 15-20 minutes, I had time to slow down my mind and listen to my heart. We enjoyed a brief burst of needed rain too. Free car wash.

I thought about the school year that is winding down, my thirty-fifth. The freshness of August becomes the wear and tear of late May and early June. I know the drill. This year has been a little extra weary and also a little teary, as I say goodbye to colleagues who are moving on or retiring. People I have worked closely with for over twenty years, or just a couple of years.

We are also preparing for numerous changes next year. I have hope in those changes and know that I will have energy to give in preparing for them over the summer and into August. There is also some fear of the unknown. I have told several people in recent conversations: “Let’s talk a year from now and see where things are at.” Experience tells me that it will be a conversation that can only reveal itself over the next 365 days.

Schools change from year-to-year, from the students, to the faculty and staff, to the building itself. I know the drill. Each year of my 35 years—first teaching and coaching, then as a counselor for the bulk of those years—has its own triumphs and trials. Each year has shaped me as a professional and as a person.

Today is the last day students will be in session. The 2022-23 school year draws to a close, just like my first year of teaching in 1988-89 drew to a close. All that winding down has included some grinding down, which has done some polishing. Here I am today, as much a student of it all as I have been the educator and counselor.