SOLC 2013 Day 18: Old habits die hard...or not at all

I like my job.  I have wonderfully supportive administrators, and colleagues who make me smile and laugh and listen to my successes and frustrations.  There is purpose to my work, a legacy in the attempt to not only educate scholars, but to instill a thirst for knowledge that will continue long after they leave my classroom.  I most likely will never know the fruit of my efforts, a decade or more away in the harvesting.  But I still strive to fulfill the duties of my chosen career.

And it makes me tired.

A little background knowledge:  until three years ago, I had not performed the duties of teaching for seventeen years.

Seventeen years.  It's a long time.

Three of those years were spent tutoring.  Another three found me on twelve-hour weekend shifts in a neonatal unit, first as an assistant, and then as a desk clerk.  For the remaining eleven years, I re-entered the education workforce as a half-time ARD facilitator for the district DAEP.  Paperwork was my life, along with running ARD meetings on my assigned campus and attending the same at the secondary campuses in our district.  I really liked that job, too.

And then I got surplussed; my job went away.  My children's elementary alma mater was gracious enough to scoop me up and rescue me.  I was hesitant at first.  It had been seventeen years since I had been a teacher.

Seventeen years.  Have I mentioned that it's a long time?

I didn't think I'd last through year one, especially since I (foolishly?) took on graduate school at the same exact time.  But I did.  And I survived the next year.  Got my MLS, even.  And now, by all accounts, I will survive this third year.  It seems that teaching is like riding a bike; you never really forget how to do it.

Except now, the job is different.  There is more paperwork, more meetings, more professional development.  And I now have a household with children, four schedules to juggle, more laundry to be done.

So I'm tired, but it's a good tired.  After Spring Break, I was going to try to break my habit of napping after my workday.  But ten hours just had me pooped.  

I guess napping, like teaching, is a habit of mine that is just not going to die anytime soon.