It’s amazing how much my world shifts when I walk out of the building in which I work knowing I don’t have to be back there for 75 days. My shoulders lower. My breathing slows. My brain calms the farm down.
I love teaching. The moment when a student realizes they have the tools to stand up for what they believe in is priceless. Getting to know these wild and weird and wonderful humans as they are on their road to becoming who they’ll be: equally priceless. But teaching is also an Olympic sport of emotional wrangling—so many tears, y’all—and of daily deciding which battles to fight and which to concede.
So, it’s summer. That crusty orange abomination is still in the White House and seemingly hell bent on destroying our country. I guess we have different definitions of the word “great.” There’s a heat dome building, so all that gnarly Kansas humidity is coming a few weeks early this year because Jesus just wants us to sweat, I guess.
JK: it’s climate change.
I spent the morning reorganizing closets, making bags of items to donate, hanging room darkening curtains to hopefully cool off our upstairs, and concocting what may just be the perfect tuna salad. Pro tip: garlic salt. It will change your life. Now I’m watching the Royals, drinking tea, and contemplating what other projects I’ll do around the house this summer.
What I’m not doing: lesson planning, grading, sending emails about kids I’m worried about, sending emails about kids I’m proud of, sending emails about the absolute bullshit of policies that don’t serve students, answering questions about MLA for the one farming thousandth time.
I hope you’re slowing down, too, this summer. I hope whatever your jam is, that you find it and settle in with the audacity of an adult man carrying on a business conference call — speaker on, no headphones — in the pool at a nice hotel. Oh wait—no. I don’t want you to EVER do that. That guy—and all the ones like him — can eat a bag of, well, you get the idea.
Just do you, humans. This life is all there is.
Shannon Carriger 