As far as I'm concerned, this is what silence looks like. When you're an elementary music teacher, you cherish the fact that the only sound you hear is the hum of the air conditioner and the computers. Everything is stored and covered and I can release myself from the pressure of feeling like I have to be a magician daily. What's it like in the real world? Do you still mentally operate on the school schedule? I've never had anything but that.
Don't be too envious of that fact. I also don't often get that feeling of a job completed. I just start all over and do it again, hoping that I've managed to do something worthwhile in the meantime. Students that have been gone for a year peek into my room and look, amazed that I'm still here teaching music, asking "You haven't retired yet???' How funny, as they work their way into grown-up-ness that their concept of time and distance is so different from mine. It's only the many shared "nows" that we have in common.
3 comments:
I love that I can always rely on you to have a new post up. Teaching and parenting have a lot in common. The job is never really done; you just keep going, in your case, with new kids, and in mine, with kids at a new stage of development. Yesterday was my last volunteer day at the school. All year, I've been working with a little girl who has some tough family issues, and who came into the middle of first grade with no schooling, no skills, and serious learning disabilities. She didn't know the alphabet or numbers. Nothing. Yesterday, she gave me a thank you letter she wrote for me herself, and her teacher told me she passed a reading test that places her at mid-first grade level. She has worked so hard and come so far. The end of the school year is really bittersweet for me this year. I started out dreading my work with her, because it was so slow and painful and took so much work to see even the tiniest progress. But I've gotten so attached to her, and I want to see her progress continue now that I won't be working with her anymore. My own kids are so privileged and so advanced that neither they nor I appreciate their progress the way I appreciate this child's progress. I suppose I should just be grateful for the "now" I got to share with her. (Sorry for the lengthy musing. I think you struck a cord.)
Silence is golden!
Hey, how lame am I that all this time, I thought that pic of you was you in a bath full of bubbles?? I just clicked on it and see that it's really some giant crystals! I need my head examined!
Too bad you don't live around
Denver. I'm looking for a piano teacher for my boys that's willing to trade for massage!
That elementary school picture is priceless.
(Not) hilarious anecdote that I'm sure you'll appreciate: our local school district's computer system LOST all the fourth quarter grades-pfft-all gone, and without a back up!
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