Tying a Knot and Holding On

It's not that I don't enjoy teaching. I missed it terribly while we were living in England and I'm glad to be back in the classroom. However, the one thing I didn't miss is the need to go up to my dark, non-airconditioned school building every Sunday for about 3-4 hours in order to stay on top of the demands placed upon teachers. Six day work weeks are no fun, especially when you factor in the salary I receive for my efforts.

Oh sure, I enjoy getting paid during the summer when there are no classes. And yeah, we get a 45 minute planning period every day. But every week we have at least one meeting of some sort during planning time. This past week I had a meeting on 3 of the 5 school days. My students may not have any science homework most nights, but I certainly do.

Right now what's keeping me motivated is travel. At Thanksgiving, we'll be in NYC for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Over the Christmas holidays, we'll be traveling with the 7th grader to California while the college coed visits a friend in England. At spring break, we'll head to Turks and Caicos for a relaxing beach vacation. June will find us touring the east coast while July will be busy with an Alaskan cruise. 

As they say, you can't take it with you when you go and so I intend to enjoy the fruits of my teaching labors by traveling with the family every time we have a holiday from school. You hear about folks toiling in the work trenches their whole lives, only to up and get sick or die as soon as they retire. If that happens to me, I won't have any regrets because I plan to rack up the travel miles from now until the Lord calls me home.