End of the school year

I love June.

Besides a birthday and an annivesary I also get the end of the school year!

The kids went home at noon yesterday and since then we've just been packing up our rooms and having meetings. (Packing up the rooms because we're moving to the final building next year, G-d willing... So far it still needs things like ceilings to cover the electrical wiring.)

What a year this has been. Let's think about this a moment:

Last year at this time I was packing home to move for the second year in a row, and on my way to the place I was most afraid of ever living in. We drove cross-country and arrived on August 1st about three weeks ahead of our moving van. Lived in bare walls right up until just days before the school year began.

It was a very very shaky beginning with challenges ranging from culture shock to a major personality conflict and then to the greatest feelings of inadequacy I've ever experienced. I had to try to understand how to get back into the groove of teaching after a year of still ruminating about cancer and teaching in someone else's classroom in Vancouver. I felt watched closely in my new school and all of my weaknesses were exposed in what felt like my first year of teaching all over again. I then suffered a personal loss that sent me into what I now realize was some depression and some very ill health. (I missed over two weeks of work from illness.)

Since that time I've gradually gotten my feet back, regained my confidence, developed good relationships with most of the people with whom I work including some with whom I once felt threatened. I learned to set boundaries and be proud of myself. More than that, I learned ways in which other teachers admire me if only for my ability to make a song out of anything in the classroom and the courage to play "follow the leader" silently down the hallway with dancing and playing on a rain day.

Blessings small and large seem to be drifting our way.

It's hard to know whether NJ can be home or not, but it certainly seems things are starting to go our way as though this is where we are really supposed to be right now. I remember last year when U. was here interviewing for a job here in NY, and I was in Vancouver we got a phone call from Oregon Public Broadcasting wanting to show Controversial Measures which U. had worked so hard to make. It was like G-d was saying, "That's right... it's not Vancouver where this is going to happen. It's NY. Lekh lekha."