(for anyone who is or was a teacher, and for anyone who knows one)
Today as we reach toward the apex of summer, there are many nervous mornings out there. The last week of July. Gulp! And when the calendar month flips, a distinct sense of fear, panic, and frenzy as teachers realize that their brief illusion of freedom is vanishing much more quickly than they had hoped or planned in June.
And when the newness of the school year in early September fades with the realization and noisy reality of 10 months of relative confinement, incarceration, and The End of any extended personal freedom, teachers quickly come to mourn their continuous contracts and the nonstop life of clock-watching, marking, report cards, insufferable pointless meetings, and foisted extra-curricular expectations.
Well, there is such a thing as having it rubbed in one’s face ad nauseam. But those who’ve been and are can, nonetheless, feel the chains beginning to tighten as August 1 looms, what is for many the truly final free week of summer. A palpable panic and the sense of being tied to a rather loaded, runaway circus-wagon rolling driverless off a steep cliff. No, there is no turning back. `Tis the beginning of the end. Again.