I’m done.

I’ve survived what was the hardest thing I’ve ever done with my life. This year, in terms of work, has been a giant rollercoaster that I can’t even describe. For those of you that have been following this since August, let me assure you what I’ve described in here doesn’t do justice to what I’ve actually had to experience. To dealing with co-teachers doing inappropriate things with students, meeting after meeting, to being assaulted, dealing with a (new) administration that treats their employees like children, to being disrespect by not only students but by parents…it’s been…I don’t even know what it’s been. I just know that I am done and I couldn’t be happier.

A reader left me a comment the other day what I plan on doing over the summer. What I really plan on doing is resting and thinking about my career and what I want to do. Teaching high school history is a given for the next couple years, there’s just no way around that unless I move into a completely different field and land an assistantship (which is a very good possibility given what a friend of mine can offer me). I’m going to look into grad schools and various masters programs in not only education, but also student affairs, event planning, history and political science.

But, I plan to spend the majority of it relaxing, working out, thinking, reading, doing some traveling, and going to plenty of concerts. I just want a chance to breath and start to turn the corner with things. I haven’t had a summer off since my freshman year of high school, and since I have an opportunity that most people don’t have…I might as well just take advantage of it and unwind and have fun.

This past week, only the “good” kids were in school. Basically, any kid that had any real shot of passing a class was allowed to campus. If you had say, a 20% in a class, you were told not to come to that class and in fact – were told to just not come to school period. It made this week enjoyable and the easiest week of the year. I had so many great kids this year and that is something that has gotten lost this year.

I’m going to miss a lot of these kids. A lot of these kids made my day and I always looked forward to teaching a lot of them. Many of my freshman are telling me they’re going to talk to their counselor next year and have me for 10th grade world history. During the past week, I’ve been a bit sad that I won’t ever have some of these kids ever again.

I did an informal end of the year survey where I asked the kids to write down one thing they liked and one thing they disliked. There wasn’t one real legitimate complaint, other than note-taking (but who really likes taking notes?). The common theme throughout the surveys was that I was, “cool”, “fun”, “interesting”, “never boring”, and that I taught the class “right where it should be. It wasn’t too easy, but it wasn’t too difficult”. I also had them sign my Politics For Dummies book (last year during student teaching it was World History For Dummies; it’s a nice little tradition I’m going to start with various social studies books) and they wrote some very nice and touching things.

It’s sort of amazing and surprising what some of these kids write and how much I’ve meant to some of them and how much they truly enjoyed my class. I’m fairly self critical on myself and abilities but what they wrote is absolutely so reassuring and nice. I feel better about myself and abilities as a teacher. Maybe its also because I’m not too much older than these kids and they see that, respect that, and we can actually relate. When I did things like have an entire world history class doing The Charleston and to see the smiles and laughter on their faces…it’s so damn cool and I know they got something out of things like that. I wanted to make world history and geography/civics fun for the kids and not stress dates and facts, but rather concepts and themes…and they got it and we had fun.

It’s a nice ending to what has been a rather difficulty and trying year.

Now it’s time for some R&R.