Rookies Again

Like many retired teachers, I get the pull come late August.  It's always been an exciting time for those who enter the classroom because the teaching profession enjoys the luxury of starting over every year.  That little renewal is often what it takes to keep fresh, keep motivated, keep going.  The job itself is exhausting and predictable is the loss of anticipation and the subtle depression that slides in by late October.
I continue to have school dreams too.  Most educators have them and even after retirement, they continue to surprise.  Last week I had two such dreams, the most significant being one where a class of seniors, feeling done, did not want to stick around so they slowly bit by bit exited the classroom.  I was powerless to do anything short of issuing threats, pleas, warnings, or immediate consequences.  Easy dream to interpret. Powerlessness figures heavily in educating another human being.

My feeling is that this latest cluster of what I call "school dreams" occurred because I've been thinking about and watching and reading news stories about the opening of the new school year.  It would seem that virtual school or distance learning, as the euphemisms go, seems to be the rule this year.  With that in mind, I checked the web sites of my old district and school to see what was happening and what I'd have to do to teach in this new reality.  That was the trigger, no doubt.  What surprised me was that even though the message was clear about when and what the new school year would look like, there was very little else on the web site.  A few links from a few teachers but that was all.  I'm sure it's all a work in progress at this point, and my former colleagues are scrambling as I write.
Former colleagues...there were very few left.  I only recognized the names of four teachers and knew none of the administrators.  That's the key to bringing school dreams to an end.  The school I knew, the people I knew, and of course the world I knew do not exist anymore.
Last week I received a phone call from a friend I made while I was supervising student teachers a few years ago.  After we renewed our friendship and how life during the pandemic, we got to the inevitable topic of the 2020 school year.  My friend is no longer in the classroom.  We hit it off when a student teacher I was working with was placed in his classroom about 10 years ago.  A former Oregon Teacher of the Year, Michael, my friend, works now in the State Dept. of Education.  Shortly before our conversation ended he said, "you know Bruce, all the things we were good at, the skills we developed over so many years, might be obsolete now."  We'd be rookies again!  Michael is a rabid baseball fan so the rookie metaphor was no surprise.  What was, I fear, is the truth of his statement.  I fear...fear... Hmm, more dreams ahead.