Just finished entering grades closing out my 32nd year teaching.

Whew!

It's been a hard year for me and I'm sure even harder for the K12 teachers out there. Still this year I'm really missing what I was oh so many years ago - a regular teacher.

Teaching from September through June is a beast and from my first day on the job I had to work ten times harder than I ever had to as a software engineer and was commensurately exhausted. In spite of what the "real world" says teachers need their summers to recharge the batteries. This isn't to say that teachers don't work over the summer - they lesson plan, attend PD and in fact a bunch of them will be with me, working towards their NY State CS teaching certification.

Now, I'm also technically on a school year contract so why do I wish I was a regular teacher? Because once you enter those final grades, you put the past to bed. Once I clicked on "post grades" in CUNYFirst I thought about that. Early in my career, before I had to deal with building Stuy's CS program and otherwise getting involved in the movement, once those grades were entered I was done. I could mentally turn off. My responsibilities to student and school were done and I'd have a couple of months before the next go around.

I noted that I should have been feeling that but wasn't. Why not? Because I'm still immersed in dealing with issues for my advanced certificate program - working on scholarship issues, getting the teachers, making sure they're up to speed, finding instructors under some draconian restrictions placed on me by both Hunter and the staet, andto be honest, the self imposed stress of feeling responsible for making everything work.

It's been a while since I've "just taught" and maybe would like to get back to that but even then, all this is making me seriously think about that possible (probable?) retirement in a year to scale things back or change things up.

In any event, ploughing ahead with the teacher certification program this month to get things in order and then teaching through July. Should get a week or two of downtime in August so that'll be the time to reflect on the year in depth. Until then it's nose to the grindstone.