First Day of Un-School: A School Story

The Story:
Tomorrow is the first day of school, for everyone but me.  I am exhilarated and heartsick, I am confused and relieved.  Every fall for the past dozen years I have gone back to school, every August I have set up my classroom and labelled folders and refilled glue bottles and planned curriculum and reunited with my colleagues.  Not so this year...

This year I am planning my great escape, this year I listen to Pirate Girl and Alef and Ms. Song as they talk about new students and new lessons and new clothes for the first day of school but I am doing something different. 

At 9:30 this morning I had my second interview with the organization for whom I hope to volunteer somewhere in Africa next year, from January until April, and it started to dawn on me: these are real places we are talking about, these are actual plans I might make.  Uganda and Johannesburg, Tanzania and Nairobi are actual countries and cities where real communities exist and if all goes as I am hoping, I will be part of one of those communities in about four months.

Sometimes I wonder if I should be doing it differently, if I should use this time I have carved out for myself beyond the Third Grade classroom in some other way.  It feels difficult to have such a clean slate...but I am trusting in my instincts, as one of the massage therapists who drove me home from camp last night was talking about, I am choosing to believe that even if I cannot explain it my heart and soul know what they want right now.

The Lesson:
Today I am making phone calls and running errands and doing laundry and taking care of business but I think tomorrow I might need to sit on the couch and pet George the cat and watch something dumb on Netflix and  and eat ice cream and cry for a little while.  In all the time since I have been a teacher, it has never been the first day of school without me.  It is a decision I have made, it is my own choice not to be at school tomorrow, new dress on and shoes freshly polished, but I still feel left out and until I have proof for myself and for the world that I am doing other things, that I have different plans for this year, I think part of me will feel disappointed.

All the more motivation to call the travel agent and spent $3000 I don't really have on a round-the-world ticket today...