Where Did My Summer Go?

I’m an educator in Arizona. This means, we get out early for summer and we go back early too. In fact, I start my new job a week earlier than the classroom teachers on my campus and they still start before the end of July. My son, who goes to school in a neighboring district, starts on July 21st. All that said, summer came and went real quick.

Mike and I did an episode right in early June about the things we wanted to do to get better both personally and professionally, Episode 36 - Summer is for Getting Better. When it dropped I was on my second week of running summer school. Let me tell you, the time to reach those goals blew by real quick. It’s like I blinked and now I go back. Even though things flew by I think I managed a little forward movement on my personal and professional goals of getting better and after this school year, I’ll take any forward momentum.

Personally I wanted to work on being able to spend some quality time with my family and keep rolling on my running routine. The Buckley house was successful on the first half of that and although I didn’t put the miles in I would have liked, I still hit the pavement and even managed to snag a couple runs while we were at the beach in California. We didn’t really do any work around the house, which we probably should have, but watching Loki, the Suns in the playoffs, and just hanging out without the stress of teaching and leading during a global pandemic was a pretty great change of pace.

Professionally, I had hoped to read a couple good education books on project based learning but instead I read some Stephen King and sci-fi novels, and binge watched Hacks with my wife. Those three weeks I spent running my new school’s elementary summer school program was a learning experience though and I got a whole lot out of it. I think that’s a whole extra blog worth of info but long story short: I’m a high school social studies teacher and I hit the ground running being the summer school program manager on my new campus. I played nurse, ed tech guru, test coordinator, and principal for three weeks. I got to learn a lot from the teachers on my campus, our Dean of Students who was there to back me up half days, and my building principal who was a text away. It was eye opening and it only made me more excited for what comes next in this new role and in the new direction I am heading in as an educator.

I’ve got two days of training next week and then I fully report on the 19th to get the school year rolling. I’m going to make the most of the next week and keep hanging out with my family and I’ll crack open that book on project based learning before I go back. Summer blew by but I’m ready for what’s next and I feel good about what I did with my time so far. I needed the rest. I needed the break. I know you probably did too. I’m just glad to leave the 2020-2021 school year behind and kick off the next school year.

So I guess I know where my summer went. It went into early morning runs, walks on the beach in Newport, dog eared pages of a Stephen King book, cheering from the couch to rally the valley, and turning up my guitar a little too loud when the house was empty. And I’m okay with all of that.