Messy

Summer for this teacher was wonderful. 
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. 

I found the magical things that refreshed me, and bound up the ways I had been unraveled in the spring.  And then, after all of the big and small things in that season, I found myself back at school. 

Life this week is everything I used to do in the spring, but it's fresh again.  Without fail this week is fresh bulletin boards and long meetings and pencils and copies and protocol.  And don't forget the crazy nightmares about losing control entirely.  (I hear you always have those, no matter how old you get.)  But in one said meeting today, our speaker said this.

'Teaching is messy.'




And it zinged me.  For all of our book inventories and perfect bulletin boards and itineraries and best laid plans, it's still a mess.  We even feel that this week, and the halls are quiet and the kids aren't here.  We're dealing with humans and we're crafting a place for them to be as learners, and it will get messy.  I live in this fully in October and November, but it's easy to forget in September.  Or right now, when you still need to know it.  It informs the planning. 

So it was kind of relieving today to hear it so plainly. 

I wouldn't have said it like that in Year One because I would have been too aghast at the idea that I could enjoy the mess so profoundly and still stand up in front of people and make sense of it all the next day.  In Year Seven I know that you don't lower your standards to always accept the mess, but it's good to note that its there. 

Education is so lofty sometimes, but what people don't see in the movies about teachers is that the abrasive struggles lie in the tangled perspectives of having to deal with every day people.  (And them having to deal with you.) 

Sarah Bessey calls it your 'walking-around life'.  And I like it, mostly because when I walk through middle school hallways, watching for anything extraordinarily weird.  But on the inside I'm thinking about how teaching is messy.  That is the setting of my 'walking-around life'.


The other thing that our speaker said today was, 'If they could have figured it out all of those years ago perfectly, believe me, they would have.' 

And THAT wound its way into my inner psyche and hit home because it put it into context.  Into history.  Teachers are unique and distinct and lots of different things all rolled into one sensible person.  Usually they are wearing cardigans.  But I liked remembering that this desire to learn and impart and encourage and open up the world for other people has been happening.  For a very long time now.  I'm part of the bigger, sensible, hopeful mess.  

 The year is looming up, large and wonderful and full of potential, and yet.  And yet.  Amidst the perfectly coifed tasks, it will always too be one relieving mess.