The last day of school is here. How about a little free association for a moment. Just a few random words in no particular order

Exhaustion.
Done.
Happy.
Summer.
Need sleep.
Already planning next year.
Gotta clean up.
Vacation.
Tremendously busy summer planned. (Writing, writing, writing. Speaking, speaking, speaking.)
Family.
BBQ.
Yoga.
Outdoors.
Shorts and flip-flops.

In general, it’s hard to think when your head is cloudy… and mine clearly is right now. But I take that as a good sign in a way because, when all is said and done, at least I know that this year, while immensely hard, was also a good one for me.

Some of the things I faced were absolutely insane? (Getting spit on, for one.) But I fought through the adversity, followed through to the end with my eyes lasered in on a few core goals and I do believe I hit them.

In the midst of an absolutely terrible time for many, many, many teachers, schools, families and so on, I would have to say that I had a good year. And why? Probably because of my absolutely intractable dedication to making sure that my students learned something valuable this year. They grew as readers. They grew as writers. They grew as people. We didn’t cover everything that I had hoped – we never do – but we covered a lot. And we did it in the midst of a furious snowstorm.

Indeed, I am tired and spent… not much gas in the tank at all right now. But then again, that’s kind of how it should be, right? You want to leave it all on the table.

2009/2010 is now officially in the books. All I can really say is, “Wow.”

Of course, while school is out for the summer, school is also never far from my thoughts. Teaching is not just my vocation, it’s my avocation.

And [to borrow a phrase] that has made all the difference.

I am going to take a break from blogging for a bit. Getting spit on last week hurt and the truth is, it kinda all goes back to grandma’s old rule: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

With pink slips flying all around my school district – heck, all around our state – and our district preparing to hire me back next year at a pay cut of up to 12% (on top of the 3% we already took this year)… and I am one of the lucky ones cause a host of folks are being “chopped” from their positions… and the dragon of NCLB allowing the tests from ETS to be the tail that wags our entire institutional dog, well… I need to pause.

Will I rise like a phoenix from the ashes? Of course. My life is GREAT and I wouldn’t trade it for anyone’s. I love teaching, I love writing, I love working with teachers and students and I get paid to do it. My avocation is my vocation and how many people can really say that?

Yet, before the Phoenix rises from the ashes, well… people forget the part about what it’s like to descend and be mired in the ashes. There is a period of gestation when one is down and to blog my way through it, well… I just sense it could be a little ugly, cynical, jaded and dark.

Like our profession really needs that kind of energy right now.

BTW, it’s not like I don’t have some other writing to do. I am under contract for another new book of YA fiction for Disney, another new book of YA fiction for Penguin, the BookJams are just roaring right now (best teaching I have ever done) and I already have 2 new books for kids in the hopper due to be released in the next 12 months (meaning 4 in the next 24 months on top of the new BookJams as well).

So essentially, yes, I will be writing like a fiend and yes, I might return to blog sooner than I think (I feel a bit like an addict being that I have become so prolific over the past 14 months as a blogger) but, well… it all goes back to grandma’s rule.

I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say right now about school/education so I am not going to say them. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t a heck of a lot of nice things that ought to be said.

But getting spit on was the straw that broke this camel’s back and right now, I am in a funk that requires a bit of time to sharpen the saw and figure out a few things.

Thanks for being a reader/responder/supporter/compadre… more to come… eventually.

You can’t make this stuff up.

My 2 1/2 year old is in pre-school now. Today she picked up a cell phone and pretended to have a conversation.
“Who are you talking to,” asked her teacher, Cindy.
“I’m talking to daddy,” she replied proudly.
“Oh,” said Cindy. “Is your daddy at work?”
“My daddy doesn’t work,” answered my daughter. “He’s a teacher.”

LOL, right?

Apparently, the anti-tenure, union-busting, down-with-the-bums, teacher movement has already infiltrated deeper inside Sitomer territory than I ever imagined.

But funny as my daughter’s comments were, I realized, in a way, she is kinda right. I mean of course, I work. But I don’t really view teaching as work. It’s more than that. It’s my profession. It’s my vocation. It’s my avocation. It’s what I love. It’s where my passion exists, my interests lay, and where a part of my soul gets filled. Sure, I’d love to have 100 million in the bank so that I did not need to teach, but I do not want to not teach. I just get too much out of it.

It’s dorky, I know.

I guess I am just one of the lucky ones in that I do not dread when the alarm clock rings and it’s time to go to “work”. That’s probably why my daughter had no idea about what the teacher was referring to. Every day when I kiss her goodbye in the a.m., it’s because daddy is always off to go “teach” — never “work”.

Though it is work, it’s also so much more.