Schools Out For Ever: Almost Anyway

School is almost over. In three days I get to leave for Virginia. It is so hard to stay focused on finishing up the school year. Do you remember the feeling you used to get as a kid when the school year ended? Do you remember how excited you were about summer? Take that feeling and magnify it a hundred times....That is how I feel. I feel like I am going to jump out of my skin. It is Christmas eve and summer vacation and the day before my wedding all rolled together in my brain. I am so overwhelmed with just wanting to be with my boys and my husband. I can barely sleep. Time seems to be slowing down into long excruciating moments the way it does when your waiting for something good. Part of my brain knows that I am going to miss all the kids at my school. It knows that I am going to miss working at the best place I have ever worked. Yet it isn't even letting my experience that right now. In three weeks I'll probably be terribly depressed about it. Today I can't even begin.

Maybe it is best this way. I love my current job. It is a crazy little school for kids with huge problems. I love that. It is a human place. A place that hasn't forgotten that these kids need relationships with real teachers to help them. They don't need a large system to squeeze them through. Systems lose people. The system has failed these kids. The students with Aspergers and other related "labels" have been eaten up and spit out by the system. These kids needed understanding and protection. Instead the system met them with inflexibility and exposed them to the torture of being bullied. The emotionally distressed students are victims not only of the school systems but by the system of society at large. Very few people go out of there way to accommodate the charming youngster who tells you to fuck off and die when given a math assignment. How many teachers stop and ask themselves what is happening in that kids life and how can they help? Not many. Large systems serve the masses. Not terribly well, but if your lucky enough to be the kind of kid who can go along for the ride you can do OK. If your outside that norm, if your tolerance is low, if you need guidance then the system often fails. It isn't set up to deal with anomaly. I know, I know...there is special education. The larger the school system the larger the special education system. Have I mentioned that I think large systems don't work for everyone? So the point is, I love this little school. I don't think I could handle leaving, the best place I've ever worked without melting down, if it wasn't for my present situation. I miss my kids so much. I know now that when all is said and done my family has to come first. I'll find another school and other kids. Maybe I'll even find a boss who is as terrific...well maybe not. I'll have to deal with the sadness from that later. Right now, the joy of knowing that I will soon be reunited with my family overrides everything.