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Survivor's Guilt

Survivor's Guilt

First day of school jitters have nothing on changing jobs.

It's such a weird feeling when you have gotten so used to the "First Day of School" or "Back to School" routine and it changes drastically. As a teacher you are used to the back to school meetings: greetings from the superintendent saying how great your year is going to be; staffing changes and fresh meat to the district; new challenges that we are going to go beat together as a family. It's the same old song and dance as it was before. You zone out as you are planning what your classroom is going to look like or what finishing touches are left before open house. 

Social media reminded me this was all going on last week. Teachers with Pinterest level classrooms that they purchased through Teacher-Pay-Teachers and "look at my cute kid" posts were popping up everywhere. It is usually a time to look at all the cool stuff that I could steal for my own class.  Not this time.

This time I felt left out. This time I saw it all within the walls of my cubicle. 

I felt a nagging that I was forgetting something. It was like when you leave the house without your wallet but you know exactly where it is. I'm not there with the teachers this year. I'm not there with them as they get their new rosters that are probably wrong because it didn't sync with the servers. I'm not there as they pose with their hallway or grade level teams wishing all of the kids a perfect year. I'm not there for Open House when the kids show up and most of them are as excited as they are going to be for the year.

I'm not going to be there for them all year. What really sucks is the number of kids I affect (for good or bad). Most of them won't know that Mr. Slone won't be there this year because of the schedule of my old job. I went from elementary to elementary, rotating every 7 weeks to a new group of kids and teachers and schedules. Those are the kids I feel for the most. 

Saying goodbye is something teachers take for granted.  We usually can say, "see you next year", and mean it. I never got to say goodbye to my kids. I don't know how their year ended and I won't know how their years begin. 

The first thing I feel is guilt that I've failed them.

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