BEFORE THIS
Reflection on the Year
Ode to a year completed
Today is the last day of school. It has been a challenging year. There have been fun times, hard discussions, amazing learning, great children, challenging thoughts, wonderful people, and more difficulties than I like to think about.
Through it all we have perservered, we have talked, we have fought, we have learned, and we have grown.
It’s an interesting feature of the teaching profession that there is a clear deliniation between one year and the next. The differences between the old school year and the new one are often so vast that it can sometimes feel like starting a new job. There will be over a hundred new faces and names in only a few short weeks. New minds to fill with abstract concepts, concrete facts, and what my daughter has come to call “teacher dad” jokes that are exactly as bad as you think they are.
But, we must not lose sight of the lessons learned. We have to remember the difficult lessons so that we do them better. We have to recall the fun, easy projects so that we can do them again. We need to make sure those lost are not forgotten or left behind. We need to prepare for a bright future, but fight the dark days of the past lest they push themselves into that future.
