May

Today is May 1.  I've been waiting for this month for a long time.  TFA is winding down.  I got my end of year TFA survey in my email this afternoon.  TCAP is over.  End of year exams are quickly approaching.  

I can foresee myself becoming nostalgic about teaching at some point in the future.  Earlier this week I had the thankless job of taking pictures of 'Student Exhibition' projects and renaming the nearly 600 files with student names and ID numbers.  It was a pain.

As I was renaming files, and not teaching on Wednesday, the noises from the hallway caught my attention.  There were to be no students in my room that day - no one knocking on the door, writing a journal, or knowingly ignoring whatever it is I say in front of my class.  Listening to the din of changing classes, I realized  in a month I won't ever be in a classroom again.  At that moment, I would rather have been directing the chaos in my classroom than digitally cataloging student work and listening to music.  It was quite a revelation.

Today, May 1, in my last class of the day, my two students (3 were absent) had finished their work early and we were just relaxing and listening to some durangense (Mexican music for the uninitiated).  An eigth grader, who I've taught for two years, said, "Mr. Golden, I can't believe I'm saying this, but next year I'm going to miss you."  It was a nice thing to say and something I really hadn't considered any of my kids possibly saying to me.  I think this is something I'll think about when I'm not teaching in a couple of years.  Not the start to May that I expected, or the post I expected to make near the end of this whole thing, but certainly a happy one.