Yellow school bus day

I haven't seen or heard the buses going by yet this morning, but they will. I think we usually have about six sightings a day once the school year starts. They're headed for Northside Elementary School from the Center Valley and Selle Valley complex of roads. Around 11 we see them when they're bringing the kindergartners home, then again in the late afternoon when school's out.

I was telling Annie yesterday as we headed to Spokane Airport that I always considered Labor Day afternoon one of the worst days of the year. Don't get me wrong. I loved teaching, but teaching did NOT love my body or my subconscious network.

Usually, the tied-up gut feelings started around the first of August and never stopped until school let out the following June. Chronic stomach disorders often reached the first of many crescendos the day before we started back----as did the interminable insomnia.

I can remember Labor Day afternoons of trying to displace my nervousness by engaging in other activities not related to school, but try as I did, those activities turned into "go through the motions only" while internally engaged on every tiny detail associated with the next day's first meeting with students.

I would get so mad at myself each succeeding year, arguing to myself that "you should be cool as a cucumber by now; you've done it so many years." That never worked. While the Boy Scout motto reads "Be Prepared," a teacher's motto could easily read "Never Prepared Enough."

So, the nerves always won. Even after working for several weeks on lesson plans, new ideas, creating bulletin boards, studying student lists and comparing notes with my sister who had the students the year before, I still felt unprepared for that first day and for those next 36 weeks. I considered a good first day of school one where I actually slept more than three or four hours the night before.

Gosh, I don't miss that. I do miss my relationship with students, though. I miss my relationship with my teaching friends, and the great relief at the end of the first day when we could gather in the faculty room, collapse on a couch with a cup of coffee, and compare notes on how it went and who was gonna push our buttons for the year. I don't miss how exhausted I felt and how raw my throat felt after talking for a full day.

I also don't miss the realization that this was just the first of 180 such days of playing hurry-up offense 24 hours a day. The school year meant working during the working hours, working during the evening hours, working in the early morning hours long before other alarms went off for other family members-------and working during those supposed sleeping hours. For nearly 25 years I suffered insomnia where every minute detail associated with school magnified one thousandfold. These days I marvel how I ever survived.

But I did.

I guess there was a greater force driving me than those two nemeses which were always standing in my way---my stomach disorder and my insomnia. There were those students who would be occupying desks across from my desk every single day. They needed an education. There was that responsibility of doing my job for them and doing it well.

There was satisfaction, quite often, amidst the moments of internal agony and constant wondering of why I chose this profession. Feeling handicapped most of the time with my never-ending internal anxiety, I met the challenges one hour, one day, one week and one year at a time. I was very fortunate during all those years to work with students, colleagues and even bosses who understood my situation.

So, as the yellow school buses roll by today, I think of those years during my own career, and I think of other teachers who more than likely are overcoming stresses similar to mine, who maybe didn't get much sleep last night, who will, nonetheless, stand in front of their classes today and for another 179 days, doing their best, putting their best face forward. That's the magic of teaching.

When engaged with those young people, a transformation occurs. The worries are still there every day, but fortunately, they usually subside enough to allow us to do the important work of guiding and teaching our young people. Now, after five years with comparatively laid-back Labor Day afternoons, happy Sundays and improved sleeping patterns, I look back and say it was all worth it.

But, I'm also quite content to be looking back! Best wishes to all teachers for a productive and satisfying school year.