With the exception of taking finals, I enjoyed those last few days of school. Books were turned in, no homework, and have the class wouldn’t show. It was during those few days that I learned my teachers were…GASP…HUMAN! I don’t think I ever saw any of my teachers out in public, so it didn’t occur to me that they would have lives outside of school. I mean, these people go to grocery stores and even the movies! During those last few days I’d offer to help a teacher clean their room, toss out old papers, or whatever task that I thought might ensure that my report card would only have A’s and B’s on it. We would get to chatting about non-school stuff. It amazed me what they knew about me that had nothing to do with social studies, language arts, science, or math. Like how they knew I took baton lessons and that my dad owned an auto machine shop.
During the high school years, the last week of school was mixed with a bit of sadness. I LIKED school. And with two working parents, trips to the beach were a rarity. My summers were filled with hours of baton practice in the hot Florida sun to get ready for nationals. I didn’t mind it, but there were plenty of days that I wished for a day off to hang out with friends at the beach. And summer romances? Ha! In my dreams.
Yet I have no real regrets about my summers. When school started back up, I didn’t have a tan to show off, but I had trophies and medals. Not a bad trade-off. My friends thought it was pretty cool when they found out I’d gotten a scholarship for baton twirling. (I didn’t see it that way at the time because it wasn’t much money, but it still helped.) And eventually, that college band experience led to meeting someone who wouldn’t be a summer romance, but my forever romance.
Now that I’m a parent, I still have mixed feelings about that last week of school. I will miss those teachers who have taken care of my babies, even if I only saw them a few times per year. I look forward to spending more time with my kids and marveling at how much they’ve grown up over the past year. And I look forward to not being a slave to the almighty alarm clock to get them ready for school.
Happy Summer!
Angela Schroeder
Patricia Kiyono
Elaine Cantrell
Jeff Salter
Joselyn
Tonette Joyce
Four Foxes, One Hound 
Most of my summers were relatively unstructured, even though I had a part-time job one summer. But after my junior year of H.S., I had a full-time summer job and that made summer a completely different experience! The following summer I worked in that same place — a feed & seed store (also sold fertilizer, tools, & eggs, among many other things). From then on summer shifted from a time of unstructured playtime to one of the work grind.
LikeLike
I felt the same way about my teachers,too, Micki…like they had alien lives.The only grade-school teachers I saw at all outside of school was one occasional substitute who lived in the neighborhood,(although I never spoke to her outside of school), and a part time music teacher,(that I don’t remember speaking to outside of school). I ran into a past teacher at a doctor’s office once, but that was practically the same thing, right? LOL! But that was in the Washington,DC suburbs.
My kids went to private schools and then homeschooled until high school, by that time we were out of Denver and in this small town in KY.EVERYONE not only knew the teachers and secretaries, they were related to each other.A totally different world, where I usually call my grandkids’ teachers by their first names! Unreal.
LikeLike
Probably not what you wanted me to focus on, but I had to google the baton practise … LOL … was that like cheerleader kinda stuff?
Never thought of teachers as “humans” when i went to school, but nowadays living in a small community we run into teachers all the time and it’s fun … especially with a daughter with the gift of the gab they know a lot about our private life and vice versa.
LikeLike
Yep, I was with you on the whole teachers have no life and that the math teacher must talk about geometry to he husband at the dinner table. Funny how we have those perceptions, isn’t it?
LikeLike