Another school year will soon be upon us and I’ve once again accepted an interim position for the first weeks of school. It will be my forty-second year in the classroom and my thirteenth after retirement. Year forty-two is getting ready to get started.
The assignment I’ll be working in to start the year is an eighth-grade science position. I’ll be working at the same school I retired from in 2010, so it’s back to familiar surroundings. I’m really looking forward to beginning the new year and am already making plans for those first few weeks.
Substitute teaching is not an easy proposition, especially over the past two years with the pandemic we’ve been experiencing. I really like interim positions, which in this case will likely be the first eight weeks of school. Although it’s been a few years since I’ve taught eighth-grade science, I’m getting great help from the teacher I’ll be working for, as well as her husband, who also teaches the same subject at the same school.
I have, like in past years, had several “teacher dreams” over the past couple of weeks. I could probably best call them “teacher nightmares,” because they almost always feature a classroom that I’ve never been in before with students who don’t seem to want to listen to any of my instructions. I’ve found that such nighttime mind wanderings are normal for teachers before the start of the school year.
So the start of the new school year is at hand. Who knows what challenges I’ll be facing, but as always, it’s my choice to continue to teach and I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve been afforded.
David Lee
David Lee 