End of Year Reflection

6.6.19—End of Year Reflection

Last year at this time, I was setting up my hut for the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year. I spent a lot of money on storage containers; inventoried and organized all instruments, CDs, DVDs, and books in the classroom; and rearranged everything in the hut so that it would be ready when the school year began. I worked really hard for all of the workdays and left my classroom more prepared than at any time in my career…only to be called away from that classroom just a few weeks later.

To say that this year has flown by would be an understatement. It seems like just last week that I was sorting through an entirely new batch of music stuff, trying to make sense of what was and wasn’t at Greenwood, trying to figure out how to set up a classroom that was actually in the building, with a closet, and near a bathroom, rather than in a hut! Instead of beginning the year prepared as planned, I began the year feeling unprepared and overwhelmed by the whirlwind that was an unexpected move and by the enormity of building a music program for 650 students (and teachers and parents, too) whose names I did not know and whose stories I’d not yet learned. Yet I made it. With the help and support of my team and with grace and patience toward myself, I made it. And it was a good year. Different than I’d expected. But good nonetheless. And my classroom finally feels normal—like home away from home—it just took some time…

Time. Our greatest enemy. Our best friend.

Or as Henry Van Dyke once said, “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”

I am thankful that time has allowed me to settle in at Greenwood and that, as far as I know, I will have more time next year to learn more names, hear more stories, and get to love people more dearly than I already do…

Yesterday at Kindergarten graduation, one of my Kindergarteners said that his favorite part of Kindergarten was completing Kindergarten because everyone in his family had completed Kindergarten and he wanted to carry on the family tradition 😊.

I have now completed 14 years of teaching. I don’t know if I will retire from this career or if God will call me to something different. But in the meantime, in all the time in between now and then—whenever “then” is—I want to carry on a tradition of excellence for my students and coworkers. I want to know people’s names. I want to live and breathe grace and patience. I want to surround myself with good people who make good things possible. And I want to tell those people that they are loved and appreciated…through all space, eternity, and time…