Transitioning into ‘Summer Teacher’
I don’t know a single teacher that doesn’t love summer. Every year each season of the year comes with a variety of excitements, but as summer inches closer and closer, every teacher (and student) is ready for break. The anticipation of getting to sleep in, read more books, spend time outside, travel, etc. are all reasons any teacher loves summer.
But as I sat in my sunroom during the first week of summer break last week, I noticed something. I noticed that some of the feelings that I was feeling were opposite of the excitement that I had had a week prior about going into summer. As I sat there I started thinking about the 8 summers I have had in my life as a teacher and I noticed that every summer I experience these same encompassing emotions:
-Fatigue
-De-stressing in the form of stressing about nothing (clenching my teeth while I sleep-anyone feel me?)
-The emotion of, “I’m not doing as much, so what do I do with myself?”
-Loneliness
-And as an ag teacher, the feeling of “I don’t really get a break…time to enter fair entries and find students to run all the summer community functions. I’m burned out…”
Maybe you can relate to these emotions if you are a teacher. Or maybe you’re a student and you notice these things too. Either way, the point is is that I do think all teachers at some point or another, have these feelings as soon as school is out. Maybe even some of my students have these feelings too, I don’t know.
Upon pinpointing these emotions, I started to think about what have I done over the past 8 teacher summers that have helped me with these emotions? Reflection was one of the first things that came to mind. I’m naturally someone that processes/works through something best when I write. So I started writing that day. I wrote down everything that came to mind about the past school year, where I’m at in this transition phase right now, etc.
I’ve learned that taking the time to journal out the good, the bad and the in-between from the school year is really important in processing and working to transition well into summer mode. I have found that the years where there was literally no break between classroom time, to ‘ag teacher ‘events coordinator’ time (I’m talking about all the duties of an Ag Teacher during the summer), that I ended up more stressed because I didn’t take the emotional and mental break that I needed. Some years are just like that. Especially if your school year goes into June, there really isn’t a hard break between the school year and summer Ag teacher duties.
Now here I sit knowing that I only have 8ish weeks left of being an Ag Teacher and FFA Advisor. After that, transitioning into a new role—mom and dairy farm wife entrepreneur. It’s hard at this point to think about or even try to visualize what this transition is going to be like. In fact I’ve had thoughts the past couple of weeks about whether or not I made the right choice.
I can plan and prepare, take the breaks I need, set boundaries, etc., but in the end God is the only one that has the true plan of what life is going to look like when my roles change. Which is why this ‘teacher summer’ pry feels even harder when it comes to feeling all the emotions that I do. But again, I know it to be true that God’s plan is way better than my own. I know that this new challenge that’s coming my way is true of beauty and change. Which is what I’ve been wanting for about a year now—challenge and a change of pace.
Whether or not you are transitioning out of teaching, or experiencing the emotions of this past school year, feel the things. Take the time to journal. Don’t feel guilty for sleeping in (even though I do sometimes) and take the time to process. Go on long walks, take more time in your skin care routine, cuddle your dog—do things that allow you to process. But most importantly, take the time to rest in God’s plan. Even though you don’t truly know what is to come, I know it’s only going to bring us closer to the one that is steadfast-Jesus.
Signing off into ‘teacher summer,’
Mrs. Nettinga
