Confessions of a Wannabe Princess

School Daze
Ahhh, those lazy summer days with nothing to do. Yeah, right! All too soon I will be going back to school. Now don't get me wrong, I love being a teacher and can't imagine doing anything else. It just seems like the summers are getting shorter. Usually by this point in the summer I'm ready to go back and see the kids and my colleagues. Not this year. I worked this summer, but I worked the previous two summers as well so that's not it. I don't know.

This year we start school on August 15. That seems awful early to me. I remember as a kid that we never went back to school before August 25 or so. We didn't get as many holidays off either, so maybe the school year seemed faster. Back in the day when my parents went to school, they didn't start until after Labor Day. (I just love saying "back in the day"!) That would make sense to me, but I don't have that power. The first school I taught at was a private school, and they go ten days longer than everyone else. I think we started on August 5 or something crazy like that!

Something else I remember about my school days is the hot weather schedule. Our district's schools weren't air conditioned until a few years ago. Because the heat in August was so stifling, the schedule was adjusted so we would be out by the hottest part of the day. For example, our high school schedule was 7:30-2:30. The hot weather schedule was something like 6:30-1:30. Getting up early wasn't fun, but we liked that early dismissal! Now that I think of it, I really don't remember being all that hot without air conditioning in the schools. I guess we were so used to it that it didn't bother us.

My classroom is just about ready, the lesson plans are being worked on, and I've even bought a couple of new outfits for the upcoming year. I may not be ready now, but once the kids are in the classroom it'll all just fall into place again.