Ambivalent August

To all of the educators looking at August with ambivalence and anxiety rather than the normal excited anticipation (and slight lamentation at an ever-shortening summer), I see you.

I remember my first day of teaching middle school years ago. I was nervous and excited. And nervous. It was the only job I ever really wanted to do--teach middle school English--and now that I was there, I was anticipating every way that it may go wrong that day. The hypotheticals were boundless, and I hadn’t even had my coffee yet. I was a new teacher, at a new school. It was exciting, sure, but I had never done it before and it was nerve-wracking.

I got there early, made sure everything I had set up the day before was extra set up that morning, I drank my coffee, and at 8:15am, after checking to see that my shirt was still tucked in, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, opened them and opened the door to greet my 7th graders. I’m sure I made many mistakes that day. I certainly made many mistakes throughout that year, but when the end of the school year came, I looked back and was proud to have met the challenge of teaching.

Normally (remember that word?), late July is a changing of the seasons for educators. While the sun still shines sweetly, out on the periphery we can see the school year slowly edging closer. With it comes a mixture of refreshed excitement and a childlike resignation that our playtime is over, however brief it may be, in whatever form it takes. August is the end and it is the beginning. This year, it feels like neither.

In a time where time itself is hard to define (can the calendar year be both agonizingly infinite and speeding by?), our normal roadmarkers are nowhere to be found. Summer has not been summer; though there may have been a period between school years, a break it was not. Not only have we not been able to decompress in ways familiar, we are looking at a resumption of remote learning, which our minds and bodies could not fathom just a month and a half ago.

Educators operate on a different clock. Our sense of time is different, and one of the ways we keep track of it (and ourselves within it) is through holidays, seasons, natural and cultural markers that time is passing by.

Without those rhythms, our sense of normalcy is lost. Without that normalcy, our ability to bring our best and whole selves onto campus and into the classroom is much more challenging. Standing on the edge of July, looking at August, it feels neither like an end nor a beginning. It feels like an eyes-closed, brace-yourself deep breath.

I look at the school year edging closer, though more quickly it seems, as the changes have come hard and fast throughout this summer. It has been a difficult time to be a teacher or an administrator. Our rhythm is off. Our sense of normalcy is absent. The normal excitement of summer is gone. We’re staring at a year of uncertainty and instability, at best.

So much is unknown. As I adjust and readjust plans for school to resume in just a few weeks, I think back to that first morning of teaching middle school. This isn’t exciting like the first day of teaching. This is much, much different. Still, it’s a challenge and it is defined by the unknown. The constant, for me, is that I won’t be doing it alone. I’ll have a community around me, even if it is remotely.