Melancholy is the Word

I'm here in my classroom, today, and it's the last day I'll be here for the summer. But I'm not so happy about that. I'm cleaning out the room, getting it ready for the summer custodial staff to do their thing. And I'm looking at an empty classroom. Seeing no students in here is NOT a happy feeling.

Yeah, I'm happy to have a vacation. Anybody would be. But it's more than just that. At the end of every school year, it's like the passing of a phase, or a stage in your life. Yeah, most of the students will be back in September, (end of August, actually,) but they'll be bigger, older, different in many ways. It won't be the same. But sure it begins a new phase, a new stage in life, in career, in the way of things.

Like my sons. As any parent knows, you have the newborn stage. Then the infancy stage, the toddler stage, the tot stage, the small child stage, the bigger child stage, the adolescent stage, the preteen stage, then the teenager stage. And that's where I'm at with my oldest son, now. The teenager stage. He's sixteen, and talking about driving and having a car.

We've already dealt with his first girlfriend stage. That wasn't fun. And my younger son is ten. That's the big kid stage. One more year and it's the adolescent stage for him.

But as a teacher in a classroom the end of the school year is a melancholy experience because it's another stage that has passed, and because you work with kids, you can't help but have that parental type of feelings toward them. Even though they are not your own kids, they are still kids, and you are still a parent, and that kind of relationship, really, becomes automatic.

After all, you're not their buddy. You're not their playmate. You are their teacher, and what's a teacher? It's like a parent in so many ways. You have to care for those kids. You have to relate to them. You have got to establish a working relationship with them. And since you are the adult, and a parent of your own kids, it's very much like being a parent to them, too. And seeing them grow up before your eyes, and then moving on, like they do, it's very much like seeing your own kids grow up, like I'm seeing right now with my own sons.

Yes, I think the word melancholy is applicable in this case. And that's where I am right now. Such is life. What are you going to do?