Homecoming

It’s August, the summer break is winding down, and I’m reminded of another reason the world of teaching suits me perfectly.  It is the feeling of “coming home” every fall.  The  type of coming home experience I thought only existed on movie screens.  The scene in which a college student comes home for the holidays and the family hurries to the door, grabbing the suitcase and rushing in for hugs.  The childhood bedroom is just as it was left, and the smells of a homemade meal waft through the house.  Only in the movies, right?  Maybe not.

The feeling when I return to the classroom every Fall is the closest I’ve ever come to this idyllic welcome.  It starts small when I head back to set-up the classroom.  At this time, fellow teachers, also eager to start the year prepared, join me in the pilgrimage back to  school, and they poke their heads into my room, oohing and ahhing over the color of the new fade-less bulletin board paper or a creative seating arrangement while coming in for a hug.  They coo, “You look so good! How was your summer? Want to go to lunch?”  That is the best beginning–to be showered with compliments and invited to a relaxed, summer lunch.  And it truly is just the beginning, the start of a soul affirming return to the hardest and only job I could ever imagine having.

The week before the students actually arrive, teachers are required to attend three days of pre-service meetings.  The kick-off meeting includes all the employees in the district and starts with a continental breakfast in the high school cafeteria.  I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten during this 30 minute Welcome Breakfast.  It’s too busy, too exciting to eat. We smile and wave at each other across the cafeteria tables.  We swap memories and laugh about this silly, important work we do, like that committee we served on together–Did we ever actually accomplish anything?  I’m sure we did!  We laugh,  real laughs not just polite chuckles, at our shared histories, rich with funny stories and the touching moments naturally found in the service work of a teacher.   Those thirty minutes with the smiles, hugs, and familiar chats are my version of the homecoming scene in all those movies I watched.

The September I returned to work following my stroke, our superintendent recognized me and my recovery in his “Welcome Back” speech.  The auditorium filled with applause, and I felt like that kid returning home from college in all those movies I’d watched.  The gratitude and love I felt that morning reminded me of Sally Field’s Oscar acceptance speech during which she gushed, “You like me.  You really like me.”  It felt like that,  acceptance and a genuine fondness.

Of course, every year does not include such a grand gesture meant just for me.  However, every year does hold the familiar, comfortable feeling of returning home.  My classroom is there waiting for me just the way I left it.  The kids see me in the hall, squeal my name, and run to my outstretched arms.  So as summer ends and a friend asks if I’m ready to go back, the answer is “yes!”   Always yes.  Truth be told, going home to school fills my life with a sense of purpose and belonging.  I treasure going “home” in September to the work I cherish.