Back To School Specials

Every year, around the end of July/beginning of August, the back to school sales and specials start. And every year around this time I think, "Oh no! I only have X more weeks/days/hours until school starts!" And I start dreading it.

I keep forgetting this year not to dread it.

It's not that I disliked the children - it's the same feeling that kids have when they go back to school and they have to start getting up early again and stop lounging around and being lazy. Teachers get that too. Only this year, I haven't been lounging around and being lazy and I don't have to dread school starting. It's very strange.

I can't quite get it through my head. I keep thinking that I need to go visit people before school starts because I won't be able to during the school year. Actually, this year I can! Or I'll hear an ad on the radio for a back to school sale and start planning where I'm going to buy a class set of crayon boxes and rulers (September is definitely the most expensive month for teachers as you try to stock your classroom - and for new teachers it's doubly difficult, as they don't get paid until September 30!) and then I remember... this year, I don't have to.

It's bittersweet, because while I don't have to spend $600 of my own money for school supplies, I also don't get to write 20 names on everything while thinking about what these kids will be like. I don't get to send them little notes in the mail saying that I'll be their teacher, and Tiger will be their class gecko. There's a very special bond I have had with my students and I think I'll miss that very very much.

But the before school staff meetings/shopping/getting my room ready? That I WILL NOT miss. Not one bit.

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Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals. This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle. For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people. It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them. Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how

A New Prison, Part Two

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A Loss

(I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why) Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me. He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me. We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.

Bronwyn Harris, Author

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