Back to school

Annual Back to School Column
Page 3 Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper & Schleswig Leader- Thursday, August 24, 2006

Happy New Year. By now students and teachers at Denison-Schleswig, Charter Oak-Ute, and Maple Valley are resuming classes. Boyer Valley has been back for a week already.

It might surprise kids and parents that teachers have been fretting and working for days or weeks before now in preparation. It’s true. A little like how musicians, actors and performers get nervous before they have to go on stage, teachers get anxious too and put a lot of work into being prepared.

In some ways this is a good thing. Some of the biggest stars feel that if they don’t get stage fright, they don’t do as well. Many teachers are the most enthusiastic the first quarter. Even the most grizzled veteran gets excited about learning again in the Fall and forgets about being burnt-out at least for the first few weeks.

I myself hardly slep the whole first week of school. Of course I had a nasty head cold too.

Rookie teachers of course, get buried very quickly, but sort of like anyone caught in a traumatic or crisis situation, they are so pumped full of adrenaline that they manage to keep on trying new things and trying to be every student’s “cool older brother or sister” kind of best friend.

Non-professional educators are always giving us teachers a hard time because we get the summer off. Funny how it never feels that way. Someone was asking my wife the other day why she was always gone so much. Well duh! She’s a teacher, it’s August. In her case, they have her teaching three new high school classes on top of being an elementary counselor. She’s not just decorating classrooms. She’s reading, researching, taking notes, devising lessons, creating handouts, writing quizzes and assignments and preparing presentations. What did you THINK she was doing?

Last summer I took two classes over four weekends. This summer I just took one and stayed through for a full week at the college. And I wasn’t even working on a Master’s Degree. All teachers have to constantly be taking classes toward license renewal, even if they’re not working on graduate work.

And of course most of us get summer jobs. That’s because while non-teachers get to read out salaries in the newspaper and think we’re paid too much, they forget that a third of that is taken out for taxes (just like everybody else) but then another third (or more) is taken out for the crummy insurance programs that our tiny districts can barely afford. I kid you not- something like $609.33 per month for hospital insurance. Per month! THAT is something I wish the Legislature would work on, let alone getting us a raise. And keep in mind, health insurance tends to go up around 24% every year. What would you do if they raised your mortgage rates by 24% every year?

Sorry. I shouldn’t complain. When I first went into teaching it was in a Lutheran school. We were considered “Commissioned Ministers of the Gospel.” Only pastors were “Ordained Ministers,” but the point is, it wasn’t just a job, it was a “calling.” I figured God wanted me to become a teacher so like a Franciscan monk, I was ready to take a vow of poverty.

Now as a public school teacher I still believe that it’s not merely an occupation, but a vocation. Some people go to college to get a job and make money, other people go to college to get a job where they can make a difference. Of course, even the most passionate idealists have to face reality of bills and kids and making ends meet.

So we teachers get summer jobs. I was really lucky and instead of scrubbing floors and toilets, flipping burgers or painting houses, I got to work at this newspaper. The three vocations that probably get paid the least, work the hardest and get the least respect in our society- journalists, farmers and teacher. Yes, we’re martyrs, give us your sympathy.

Pont is, we’ve been working all summer. And many of us have been working for the past month or two to get school ready for you kids. So please cut us some slack. We know you haven’t woke up before 11 all summer and you think that books and homework is a drag. But we’ve been working hard to share our knowledge and experience with you so that you can make this a better world.

On top of all that, may teachers, like me had been drinking 8-10 cups of regular coffee a day at their summer jobs and now we’re switching back to decaf. Don’t be surprised if we talk a little slow at first. At least through September.

Happy New Year

I suppose that not all of you are celebrating this holiday with me. For most of you New Year’s happens in January. Oh, there may be some of you who focus on the "Fiscal Year," which ends in June (I think, thank God I’m not an accountant). Some of you might be asking, "What’s he talking about? The Jewish New Year? I didn’t know he was Jewish? The Chinese New Year? The Muslim New Year?"

No, silly reader, I’m talking, of course about the New School Year, well under way for a week by the time you’re reading this. Just as farmers measure the passage of time by the crops and the seasons, we teachers and students see January only as the middle of the year, the last end of the first Semester. No, for us in "the United States of Academia," the New Year began last week.

"If your New Year starts in August," you may ask, "what year is it?" After all, on your calendar it’s 2002, for Orthodox Jews, its 5760. Well, it depends who you ask. For most students it’s a name, not a number.

"I’m in THIRD grade," they might tell you. Or you might hear a parent tell you "Mary Beth is gonna be a Sophomore this year." It can get confusing, like when you ask a teacher how old a child is, "Well, let’s see, Johnny’s sister is a fifth-grader now, so I think he’s a first grader, isn’t he? No- wait, wait,wait, he’s in Mrs. Browns class, so he must be a second grader this year." Of course they never tell you the child’s age, you’re just supposed to figure out in your head how old you were when you were in second grade and assume that Johnny is about that old, plus-or-minus a year.

For teachers, it’s different. I have a friend for whom this is the year "15," although they’re thinking they may only have three or four left because they’re starting college classes toward a new career. Other’s start counting backwards, "Only two more till the IPERS (pension) kicks in, I’m thinking maybe three more, but I’ll probably still sub after that."

Still other teachers restart their calendar depending on their location or responsibility. I believe our new Superintendent at Boyer Valley was in the year 18 when she became a principal, but then there was a completely different year system as principal and of course now this is only year ONE. Can you imagine? As if the world was just created? How strange, not 2002, but just ONE.

For me this is not just the New Year, it’s the new decade. No, wait, not yet, this is the LAST year of the decade. Just as 2000 wasn’t really the start of the new Millennium, 2001 was. I started teaching in 1993, so this is just the start of year TEN, the second decade won’t start until next August.

Confused? So are History, Math, Science and Accounting teachers, so don’t feel bad. Oh, did you know that on the Chinese calendar, this is the year of the Horse? Well, I don’t know about Charter Oak-Ute, but at Boyer Valley, this is the "year of the Goose." Don’t ask.

Well, whatever year it is for you, make it a good one, full of learning and challenge. Don’t let the anxiety of book reports put your stomach in knots. Enjoy the aromas of pencil shavings, chalk dust, magic markers, teacher’s lounge coffee, hot lunch and gym socks. Think of August as a time of renewal, of fresh starts and second chances. If you’ve broken all your resolutions