It’s been a while since I last taught anything, and this week has reminded me: teaching is hard, exhausting work. At the school I work full-time, but the actual amount of contact time I have with students teaching is just a small percentage of the time I’m on campus.
After my first full week of teaching I cannot, for the life of me, imagine what life could be like for an elementary school teacher who teaches 6-7 hours per day, five days a week. Working with students is exhausting, depleting work, balanced by the sense of fulfillment one gets at the end of a good day.
Still, I now can completely understand why full-time teachers require the summer off. After nine to ten months of instruction, of patience, of learning, and of life, teachers must have a prolonged time to recharge and rejuvinate the mind and body. It would be nearly impossible for them to come back in September to start all over from the beginning without it.
Posts about school may start to slowly disappear from the site for a while, until I feel out the situation. Because I’m teaching Web courses, I know it’s only a matter of time before the bulk of my students discover this site (one already has).
That said - to every single teacher I have ever had in my life: I apologize. I apologize. I apologize.
