School Starts

Tomorrow marks the beginning of this 2014-2015 school year.  I think that I am ready to go...

I have new school clothes and new school shoes.  The room is all clean and neat and organized (the ONLY time this year that it will be any of those things).  I have lesson plans and science labs all set and ready to go.

All that remains is to add kids.  They bring the whole business to life, create the questions, find the solutions, seek out the new ideas and share what they find.  In some ways, the work I do is about setting all of that in motion, and then trying to stay out of their way.  What I give them is the space and time to work and figure out what is out there waiting for them to find it.  I provide the assurance that they CAN do that, I encourage their efforts and cheer their attempts.  I help them mop up after failures, and I sit with them as they plan new ways of tackling problems that challenge them.  It is a mad, messy, chaotic, up and down endeavor, and I love it all.

I am in the remaining hours before we all come together to start a new year.  It is, for me, always a time of nervous, anxious, worried "what if-ing."  As long as I have done this work, I never seem to approach a new year without worrying about the beginning.  So, now I just need the kids to arrive.  I need us to start.  I need us to meet and smile and shake hands and turn together to walk into the new year together.

I just hate the waiting!