This month marks the start of my fifth year out of the classroom. I can no longer recite the schedule of my former high school. I don’t know whether teacher workdays are this week or next, or whether they’re calling them LIDs or PRADs or some other stupid fun acronym.

I still don’t miss it. And I still miss it.

I DON’T miss the stomach-rocks at the thought of losing delicious summer freedom. It’s not that teachers don’t work in the summer. Most teachers I knew actually took only about three weeks completely “off.” The rest of our summer included workshops or meetings or curriculum development, or all three. But we could generally schedule that work at our discretion–no ringing bells telling us where to go. That made all the difference.

If I let myself, I can still feel those stomach-rocks. I’ll bet most of you former students and teachers can too.

I DO miss that happy adrenalin of “THIS-year-I’m-gonna-try_____”; of fresh, new, empty lesson plan pages waiting to be filled; of that first packet of “Dear Ms. Wing” letters I’d make my students write on Day One. (At the end of the year, I’d write back.)

What other job is as cyclical in nature as teaching? What other job follows such a prescribed rhythm, allowing what’s new to stand out in such beautiful contrast?

(orig. image courtesy Wikimedia)

I can’t think of one. Can you? What jobs out there have you had which allowed such a lovely sense of starting fresh?