It's May, people...

I haven’t posted in a few weeks because, well, it’s May, people.

And this post will be crazy short because, well, it's May.  

May brings conflicting feelings we all experience, us principals and teachers and parents.  There is so. much. going. on.  There are athletic championships, and music concerts, and Arts Night, and celebrations and awards shows and parent events.  For us at the elementary level, there are field trips and popsicle parties and student-to-parent performances, and there is Field Day.  (Need I say more?  Such a happy, exciting, energy-filled day—that leaves us flopped on the couch like a dried up old sponge at day’s end.)  Middle and high school people have awards ceremonies and graduations and parties.  Tons and tons of those things.  My comrades at the secondary level have zero control of their schedules right now; they’re just waking up every day and determining how many events they need to get to before the day turns into another day and it all happens again.

None of which is a complaint, though.  There's nothing to complain about, really, except being tired.  Which isn't a bad place to be.  Tired is uncomfortable, maybe, but it's also triumphant.  After all, by now we’ve spent a lot of time with our students, so we know them really well.  We’ve grown fond of them.  Exceedingly fond, in fact.  So we’re a little sad that it’s all going to end and fade off into memory.

That's the thing.  May brings a complicated mixture of twinges—pride, sadness, nostalgia, giddiness, celebration, and that lovely relief in knowing it's almost time to close one book and open another. 

So it’s not just hanging on throughout these last few weeks.  Saying, “I’m just getting through” would diminish the fabulousness of this time of year.  Because the truth is this: May is not something to endure.  It is a time to be really freakin’ proud of ourselves for what we’ve done for the past ten months—the energy we’ve given, the triumphs we’ve experienced, the challenges we’ve handled.  It’s also a time we can give everything that’s left, because in a few weeks the pace will change and we can fill our emotional gas tanks again.

We can see summer's light, and we're propelled by its pull.

I'm feeling very, very grateful to be in a job and a world where I get May.