The end of the school year.
For teachers in some schools, it has already happened. In other places it is just days away. Whenever it happens, finishing the school year is accompanied by feeling of pressure to finish things up, anticipation of summer and, almost certainly, exhaustion.
We have just run our own kind of marathon. The pattern of a teaching year is familiar to all of us. Getting organized at the beginning and setting up routines. Finding a pace, punctuated by events—conferences, holidays, renewed efforts. That long haul when the sun nearly deserts us. Spring at last. That flurry at the end, when everything is due. And, then, finally a deep breath.
After we exhale, we can begin to put our experiences into perspective and answer an important question: What does this year, in this place, at this time in our lives add up to. Part of happiness is finding the pattern and meaning in the span of our lives, something we can do best by looking backward to see what has transpired.
This is a good time to look back on the year just ended and ask some questions. What did I achieve this year? What was I brave enough to try? Why did I do things the way I did? How can I do it differently, better, more deeply, and more fully?
My favorite June question has always been: What’ll I try next year? By the time I had taught a course or a concept a few times, I began to feel stale, and it seemed that if I had lessening enthusiasm, so would my students. So I usually set my mind to intake mode, staying aware of the curriculum and sifting the stimulus from the world around me for something that would click. By waiting and watching, I found inspirations from many sources, most of them serendipitous accidents.
When the new ideas came to me, so did excitement. Technically, I was still vacationing, completing a personal To Do list or taking a class, but ideas would start to percolate about the new possibilities. Maybe I was just redirecting the energy usually taken up by daily planning, but it was fun to consider possible scenarios of how the new project/lesson/approach would look. The process is a bit like mental movie-making, I suppose—imaging details of how I would present or organize my renovated method or content.
So the invitation to keep growing is what I am sending your way. What will you choose next for your own development? What do want to try? How will you grow? Who will you reach? Where can you make a difference?
Whether you reach what you aim for is not the point. Reaching is the point, and every end is a new beginning.
