Back to School

giggly eggs and wiggly smiles. we got this.

Well, back in June, freshly into my first summer off as an educator, I had big plans. Did you do this too when you were a kid? You’d look at what seemed like a VAST couple of months off and declare your total transformation? “This summer, I’m going to get POPULAR!” was a perennial favorite of mine, until I quickly remembered that I really didn’t care about being popular and actually the popular girls were kinda mean anyway. Then I went back to doing what I liked best in the summer: climbing trees and reading.

You’d think I’d have learned a lesson from my younger self, but I absolutely did a grownup version of this anyway in June. I was going to clean my whole house! I was going to renew my yoga teacher certification! And I was definitely going to start that blog I kept thinking about. All those facebook posts about my job that my friends and family kept telling me they enjoyed, my little stories about the kids I work with and the fascinating things they say and do every day - all those were going to be turned into blog posts and have their own special home here instead of disappearing forever into the hazy quagmire of social media.

Well, I started it anyway. And then I got busy. And also climbed some trees and read some more books. Some things never change. I still have grand plans for the other goals, but maybe it’s ok that they can’t be done that quickly. Maybe we all have our entire lives to do the things that are important to us. The ever-increasing pile of laundry in my basement might disagree, idk.

Meanwhile, school has started back up again, and I’ve continued to post about it on facebook. I started this job midway through the school year last year, so now I’m getting to see what it’s like from the very beginning for the first time. The cranky 6th graders have moved on to middle school, and we’ve got a fresh new bunch of wiggly preschoolers. Returning friends are that much taller, wiser, snarkier. New love triangles have formed, broken, reformed several times over. I’ve already introduced a few dozen books to them all - Pete the Cat and Neil Gaiman are the current favorites (the latter might be just because a viewing of Coraline the movie has been promised when we’re done, but still.) I’m debating between Pete or Coraline for my Halloween costume, and see a yellow raincoat and blue hair in my near future either way.

And the kids have said and done a lot of notable things. So I’ve got a new goal: I’m going to try to catch up, and transfer those posts over here. And then keep it going. I hope it’s worth it to my friends and family to click a few extra links to keep enjoying this content. I believe my students deserve it.

Like some 4th grade magnetic poetry, perhaps?

Or that day I had the kindergarteners color some pictures of fall leaves, and a group of girls all made them rainbows. “Beautiful job, ladies!” I said. Without hesitation, little K snapped back with a radiant smile up at me, “YOU’RE a beautiful job!” Tee hee!

Or that newly minted 6th grader, R, who I usually consider kind of a very serious crankster who never smiles, who turned to me one day and asked, “do you ever frown?”

This one disarmed me, I admit. “Sometimes?” I said. “I don’t know, I’m a happy person I guess.”

He said, “what if you were at a funeral, would you still smile?” I thought of my recently departed uncle’s funeral this summer, which of course included some tears, but also turned into a joyful family reunion. “Hmm, depends on the funeral,” I said.

“Ok, make a straight face now,” he said. “Let’s see it.”

I made a straight face. He cracked up.

Sometimes, unlocking the achievements we didn’t plan on making - like seeing R laugh - is worth all the goals still waiting.

Here we go, 2024-25.