The Last Day of School and First Day of Summer Vacation

It just stops so abruptly.

For nine months, you’ve been going full speed.  I’ve compared the school weeks to swimming laps as fast as I can, with the week-ends being quick breaks to take a breath, and then dive right back in.  During the school year, the job is never fully finished. In the back of your mind, there is always a to-do list, the next lesson to be planned, assignments to grade, copies to make, data to collect, questions to ask, answers to reply, meetings to prepare for, articles to find.  Before school, during school, after school, on week-ends, on vacations.  You can never stop, never get away.

And then it’s the last day of school, and it’s done.  No tapering off, just done.  The end. 

It’s jarring.

There are some teachers who fly out of school on the last day, carefree and ready to live it up summer style.  For many of us, (maybe us introverts?) the last day is the hardest.  

I felt lost.  I came home from my last day of my nineteenth year teaching middle school and wandered around the house, unsure what to do.  I was restless and purposeless.  I couldn’t read.  I couldn’t focus.  I couldn’t even hold a conversation. 

So much emotion goes into every day of teaching, so much energy.  I had to find automatic actions to occupy my body while my brain tried to unwind a year’s worth of tangled memories of students, co-workers, their stories, successes, failures, if-onlys, maybe-next-times.  

I felt like I was recovering from an extended illness.  My energy was sapped, and I’m sheepish to admit, I couldn’t stop tearing up.  Something was missing, like when you leave the house without putting on your Fitbit and keep glancing at your wrist, but nothing’s there.

The good news is, 24 hours later, I am back to normal.  The remedy was sleep, time, and some piano playing, some running, and some sitting in a chair staring off into space and thinking.  I’m ready to embrace the summer, learn some new things, rest a lot, and return re-charged in the fall. 

Images of the last day of school are awash with teachers running out of school smiling, celebrating freedom, partying.  If that’s not you today, that OK.  Teaching takes a lot out of you, and it will take some time to put it back.  Get some rest; do what you need to do.  Then go enjoy a day planned with what you want. You earned it.