Happy New Year!
This morning I got out of bed and headed into school year 2022-23, leaving the rest of my family peacefully snoozing in their beds. My spouse just retired as a high school social worker, so for the first time ever we weren’t getting ready together. It was weird. But even though things are starting off differently this year, the same excitement is bubbling up. During my first year of teaching, I said that the day I no longer get butterflies when the start of school rolls around, I’d know it was time to retire. That was 1987, and it hasn’t happened yet.
When I walked into my first classroom at Benton Elementary in Nicholson, Georgia, the air was permeated with clouds of chalk dust and the astringent scent that comes only from a can of Lysol. Today those scents have been replaced by the diesel-fume smell of dry erase markers and the bleach of disinfecting wipes, but for me, it’s the indefinable “scents” that call me back year after year. Even though students haven’t returned, there is such expectation in the air. The adventures yet to be experienced, the new relationships waiting to be forged, the angst when things get hard – they are all there, hovering in the air, ready to be experienced.
In August I often decorate my classroom door with a big Happy New Year banner, along with party hats, streamers and noise makers. For me, January 1 can’t hold a candle to THIS “new year”. I’ve celebrated 35 years of school starting, of watching students come pouring into the school building wearing their shiny new shoes, and clutching their school supplies. Whether it’s kindergarteners whose backpacks are almost as big as they are, or seniors walking in for their last first day, it’s a feast for the eyes. Faces gleam with smiles, and some with tears. The walls reverberate with sound as students recognize friends they haven’t seen for months, as teachers exclaim over how much their former students have grown over the summer. For me, it’s an experience worthy of fireworks and sparklers, even though those usually accompany the other New Year.
I don’t make resolutions on January 1, but I make quite a few when August rolls around. I resolve to be the best I can be for those with whom I’ll be spending the next nine months. I vow to keep my focus on the things that really matter and let the things that don’t benefit me or my students roll off like water on a duck’s back. As teachers we get to experience this over and over, year after year. We have many opportunities to hone our skills and work on our weaknesses . But our students only get this one time with us. Time is precious, and this is their time.
Although it’s a new year, I won’t sing “Auld Lang Syne”, because the literal translation of that song is “times long past”. Instead I’ll fill my head with songs like “Here Comes the Sun” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (the Israel Kamakawiwo’ole version, of course). I’ll take a deep breath and submerge myself in the exhilaration and exhaustion, in the joy and heartache, in all of the things that come with being an educator, for the next nine months. No other profession offers such anticipation and expectation every year. For all of my fellow educators, I wish you a year filled with everything you need to grow. I hope you fall in love with your students and they with you. May we all, students and teachers alike, come out better because of our time together.
Banner image by former student, Isabella Briganti, UC Denver