Into The Unknown

About a year ago, I wrote a post about how I had all these big plans for summer, but none of them happened. This summer was basically the same. I haven’t even posted anything here since the end of May.

It doesn’t help that I spent the first week of June in Kansas City grading AP US History essays. Then a week later we spent three nights camping at Garner State Park. And then three nights in South Padre Island.the second week of July. I needed a break from my vacations. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

What actually happens every summer is that I get out of routine. I NEED routine more than I realize. If I don’t have a purpose or goal in mind when I get up in the morning, doom scrolling, reading endlessly, or playing College Football ’26 will end up occupying most of my day.

Relaxing isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that I have these delusions that I’m going to get stuff done with my free time…and it doesn’t happen. Then I get frustrated with myself. Then school starts back up, and I haven’t “accomplished” anything.

As I’m typing this, we’ve just finished the first five days (out of seven) of staff development to get ready for the start of the new school year. As much as I am looking forward to the routine of the year once again, I’m feeling the most unprepared that I remember feeling at this point. With department chair duties, preparing for three different courses, and all of the construction at our campus, I’m slightly overwhelmed.

But it’s going to be okay. How do I know? Because I know. This will be my 24th year teaching, and it’s always chaotic to start the school year. The type of chaos is all that’s different. And it always works out, one way or another.

During our second day back this week, admin had us do what amounted to speed dating so we could get to know some staff members that we maybe didn’t know as well. (That part was kinda lost on me since I already knew three of the four people I was paired up with, but whatever.)

They let us prep our answers ahead of time so we could run through the activity relatively quickly. Besides basic info about ourselves, one of the questions for us to answer was what we are most excited about for this school year. They didn’t really give us much time to come up with responses, so I just wrote “the unknowns” and went on to the next question without thinking too much about my answer.

As we were going through our partners and reading our responses, my second partner gave me a funny look when I told her I was excited about the unknowns, so I elaborated quickly. We never know what we’re going to get in our classes from one year (or minute, or day) to the next. It’s always different even if you’re teaching the same thing every year. There’s always something new that you didn’t expect, and that alone makes teaching exciting. (That may not be exactly the words I used, but that’s the gist of it.) My partner smiled and said, “I like that.” And I guess I do too.

That’s probably also why I don’t get much done during the summer. I’m exhausted from dealing with the unknowns, and I know more are on their way in a couple of short months. Teaching is a lot of things, but boring is not one of them.

So here’s to another year of unknowns. May all educators everywhere deal with them fully, gracefully, and with plenty of caffeine.

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