When the school year ends and the summer begins, a lot of teachers bring work home with them, effectively shooting down that whole civilian chorus of “Boy, it must be nice for you teachers to have the summers off!” (This is ignoring the fact we cram fourteen months of work into ten.) Teachers will take time out of their vacations for planning, organizing materials, taking classes, and any number of things that will help them get ready for the fall. I’ll be changing to a different grade this year so I brought home a lot of potential work, knowing how valuable it would be for me to familiarize myself with the new materials. I am incredibly proud to say that all of these materials have spent the entire summer untouched since I hauled them out of my car back on June 12th. No surprise there, really.
But I had one homework assignment for the summer I really couldn’t avoid: I had to make a collage. No, scratch that: I had to make a FUN collage, to showcase who I am as an individual outside of school. As the note said, “I am a teacher, but I am also....” followed by “We would like to request that each staff member create a fun collage over the summer to showcase who you are as an individual outside of school. We will be showcasing our collages to staff, parents, and students at our open house in August to help give our school a warm, welcoming feel. Thank you in advance for your creativity! Your collage can be any size or format. We look forward to seeing more of who you are!”
This project came courtesy of the Cultural Competency Committee --a team comprised of collaborating caregivers concerned about creating a comprehensively comfortable and inclusive community (I couldn’t let that name get away with only three Cs.) I’ll admit, the collage isn’t a bad idea as far as open house introductory activities go, and it’s a lot better than some of the other things we’ve been asked to do in previous years. But speaking as someone so introverted I actually went back-to-school shopping at a Target store two suburbs away instead of the one a mile from my house (just to make sure I didn’t run into any families who wanted to make Target small talk about summer and how it’s almost over) the idea of assembling any kind of representation of who I am away from school is slightly daunting, to say the very least.
I’m predicting several of these collages will feature photographs of husbands, wives, children, babies, and pets. I personally have none of these things. (Okay, yes, I did have a dog, but the less we revisit that little tragedy, the better.) So if my collage is going to have any kind of fun to it at all, I have a lot of empty spaces to fill. And the thought of my collage being the only one presented that leaves people walking away with misplaced feelings of boredom, shame, and misery instead of inspiring all kinds of welcoming fun? Gahh! I can’t take that kind of pressure!!!
So that brings me back to the original prompt: “I am a teacher, but I am also....” I won’t get into the malleable concept of self and how each of us rotates through so many different projections on any given day, since I’ve already done that post (click here if you want to dive into those deeper thoughts). I’ve got enough on my plate trying to think of how I’m going to define myself for one little collage without circling back to deconstruct what, if any, personality I may possess beyond the pictures and music on my phone and a modest collection of Facebook Likes.
But for now I’m just going to put this issue out to the collective consciousness of the Internet, pop open a bottle of diet Snapple half-and-half, put my existential crisis on pause and enjoy my final two weeks of summer for all they are worth while waiting for inspiration to arrive. And if I don’t pull it off, I apologize in advance to anyone who experiences my collage and ends up soul-starved and broken as a result....
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