All the kids jumped out of bed at six today. Sophie starts middle school for the first time, popping right into seventh grade. Amelia moves into a classroom where she knows only two people. And Maisie has been directed to stop sucking her thumb. But they're all flying.
They managed an entire year in a classroom where no English was spoken, and more than anything else anticipating our year in Hungary, this was the thing that worried me most. The level of stress that goes with any change, any new situation, any encounter with strangers is difficult--but no English! One of the great things I learned in Hungary was a deep respect for the resiliency of children, and for the reserves of adaptability and joy in my children in particular. They never became stressed by the move, they never got homesick, they never wished to leave. They came home from that first day of school in Hungary exuberant and ready to play with each other, as always. And even before their vocabulary grew, they cobbled together communication and were happy members of the school community.
After all that, I'm still nervous about today, especially for Sophie in middle school (middle school!), for whom we partly engineered an escape from the country just so she could miss the devastations of sixth grade.
As for me, I'm writing in my classroom at 7:08 am. In 50 minutes, I'll have my first classes in America again. When I first returned from Hungary, I had a difficult time getting my head around the old job. One of my goals in Hungary, after years of working tremendously hard as a teacher, was to go out, slow down, and get a new perspective--to realize I didn't have to work as hard and as feverishly and numbingly as I had been doing. Instead, from Hungary, from a foreign language position with minimal meetings and planning and almost no paper grading, as well as exponentially fewer hours, I looked back on my Roosevelt job and thought, man, that is a huge job.
My first contact with the old work this summer was a training at the university, where my brain was sluggish and resistant. The instructors were asking us to be so intellectual, purposeful, and creative in our teaching, and the acronyms were back. My second contact was a training at district headquarters, where I hurt my brain and maybe my stomach too. But the next move was at Roosevelt itself, where the landing has been happy and soft, good colleagues and a good community and an energy of welcome and spirit.
It's my first day of school again, and I'm flying.
They managed an entire year in a classroom where no English was spoken, and more than anything else anticipating our year in Hungary, this was the thing that worried me most. The level of stress that goes with any change, any new situation, any encounter with strangers is difficult--but no English! One of the great things I learned in Hungary was a deep respect for the resiliency of children, and for the reserves of adaptability and joy in my children in particular. They never became stressed by the move, they never got homesick, they never wished to leave. They came home from that first day of school in Hungary exuberant and ready to play with each other, as always. And even before their vocabulary grew, they cobbled together communication and were happy members of the school community.
After all that, I'm still nervous about today, especially for Sophie in middle school (middle school!), for whom we partly engineered an escape from the country just so she could miss the devastations of sixth grade.
As for me, I'm writing in my classroom at 7:08 am. In 50 minutes, I'll have my first classes in America again. When I first returned from Hungary, I had a difficult time getting my head around the old job. One of my goals in Hungary, after years of working tremendously hard as a teacher, was to go out, slow down, and get a new perspective--to realize I didn't have to work as hard and as feverishly and numbingly as I had been doing. Instead, from Hungary, from a foreign language position with minimal meetings and planning and almost no paper grading, as well as exponentially fewer hours, I looked back on my Roosevelt job and thought, man, that is a huge job.
My first contact with the old work this summer was a training at the university, where my brain was sluggish and resistant. The instructors were asking us to be so intellectual, purposeful, and creative in our teaching, and the acronyms were back. My second contact was a training at district headquarters, where I hurt my brain and maybe my stomach too. But the next move was at Roosevelt itself, where the landing has been happy and soft, good colleagues and a good community and an energy of welcome and spirit.
It's my first day of school again, and I'm flying.
