Summer Mindfulness

Summer is a complicated time for me. I'm fully aware of how fortunate I am to be part of the working population who has the summer "off" and as a result has a very different life during that time.

My summers are not, however, smooth sailing. My workaholism, ambition and strong belief in the importance of professional development prevent me from just vacationing. I've been putting in hours studying for my special education endorsement program as well as accomplishing things that I'm unable to do during the school year.

The onset of every summer is emotionally jarring for me. There's an enormous leap from putting in long and stressful hours, investing my work into children, worrying that my work over the year wasn't enough, waving them off and then having only my own child left to care for. To put in so much energy for other beings and then just have them disappear after maybe giving me a goodbye and thank you card is uncomfortable. It shakes up my sense of self-worth and industry. Then I face unstructured days and lists upon lists of expectations for myself, goals, to do lists.



This year it was even more so. The last two weeks of school were particularly charged as I had already started studying for the first of my two summer classes and had mounds of work to do for the class. Then I took over a classroom for a friend who went on medical leave. That too was charged as I didn't have time to bond with the class first and so frustrations were more frustrating, I had to work with new personnel, and I had to merge the previous classroom teacher's style and vision with my own. Finally, I had a personal trauma that I'd rather not go into in great depth right now.

As a result, the first few weeks of my summer were shakier than usual. I was emotional and felt guilty for squandering my time in crying.

This week on Monday, though, I took a wonderful class on Mindfulness For Educators. Some of the material was new for me. Some was not. I've tried brining more mindfulness practice to my classroom before and have not felt terribly consistent or successful, but I'm encouraged to try again.

More importantly, I got to meet Nancy and now feel I have another resource backing me to bring the sensitivity and mindful practices that I value into my classroom without too much stigma. And even more importantly than that, the class brought me back to myself.

After our first hour in the class, Nancy asked us to write down our expectations for the day on sticky notes. We then took these over to stick onto her directly. It didn't work. It was awkward to put them on someone else. They didn't cling well to her clothes. Many of them stuck to each other, were hard to read and fell off. They were cluttered, disorganized, overwhelming.

See? This is what happens to expectations.

This one day of playing in childlike days, being with other teachers in a safe space, breathing and talking about children's experiences, and releasing expectations has helped me drop down more gracefully into my summer work. I've been meditating daily since the beginning of the summer. Now I feel I'm able to be present more during the rest of the day too. My to do list has 24 "overdues" on it right now, but I'm ignoring addressing some of the tasks, rescheduling others, laughing at others and sometimes even deleting a few.