It's Beginning to Look like Christmas for Teachers Everywhere!

It's beginning to look like Christmas for teachers everywhere!

Winter break will be here soon. December 18 to be precise and as a teacher I am excited because it is a guilt-free two week vacation that I think after 16 weeks of teaching I deserve. Yes, that sounds a little arrogant but arrogance is the gift I give to myself for at least two weeks every year. I own a mobile music studio and I teach music to preschoolers 5 days a week. We laugh. We learn and we also get very exhausted - teacher and students alike. We definitely need a break.

So what are my plans to rejuvenate over the holiday? I would like to say absolutely nothing, but alas that is not my disposition. Here are some things I am looking forward to before starting fresh in 2011.

Reconnecting

The holiday break grants me the opportunity to reconnect with my family. Reconnecting means building a fire on a Wednesday afternoon for no other reason, but because we can. It means enjoying the fire while we play dusty old board games that have sat untouched during the first part of the school year because we have either been to busy or to exhausted to give relaxing a second thought. This time to bond again with my two daughters and my husband is rejuvenating. It gives us a chance to get to know each other again before the new year attempts to swallow us up and suffocate us with schedules and obligations.

The holiday break also gives me a chance to reconnect with friends who have moved away. Email is a effectual way to keep up with these friends throughout the year, but it does not replace a voice on a telephone where questions are answered immediately and instant gratification replaces waiting for an electronic response that may or may not ever come - my friends are busy, too. So, this holiday break will find me chatting away on that antiquated device called a phone and catching up.

Hobbies

I have several hobbies. Enough hobbies that drive my husband insane because I am constantly bouncing from one project to the next without actually completing anything. For two weeks, I find time in my schedule to finish the quilt I started one week before the school year began (poor planning is an issue I need to work on), read at least two books in the stack that sits beside my bed and come up with a new project that I will start a day before the second semester starts. This last project will most likely sit uncompleted until summer break roles around. It is kind of a tradition and a springboard that starts my summer break, but that is an entirely other topic.

Organization and Cleaning

With all the holiday festivities, especially the ones that involve my house, I will need to set aside time to organize and clean. Projects that are on the top of my list include creating a brand new calendar system designed to keep better track our springtime activities because I failed so miserably keeping track of the fall activities. Did you know six -year-old little girls do not find it redeemable if you miss a friend's birthday party?

I also plan to do some serious deep cleaning of my house before Christmas Eve ( I will have exactly six days to get this done) and then cleaning it again after Christmas Eve because I am sure it will be destroyed. Overly excited children and inebriated adults do not usually keep a house tidy.

In addition to organizing my schedule and cleaning my house, I am determined during this Christmas break to purge my in-box. The 4.000 emails in my in-box will be obliterated this holiday season. Goodbye to all the spam and useless forwards. Hopefully, my delete button will survive the assault.

The Big Picture

I would love to be able to say that I plan on leaving work behind without a second thought, but I would be lost if I did that. My husband says I work too much, but it is something that fulfills me and makes me feel competent. So, while I may not be teaching in the classroom there will still be lesson plans that need to be tweaked and reviewed. You cannot go into a class with a bunch of four and five year-old children and not be prepared. They will eat you for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I know that to some people my plans for the two week break may seem crammed with the potential to burst derailing any hope of accomplishment or relaxation. Many will not even see how I could relax with so many pre-planned activities. I forgot to even mention my scheme to go ice skating and see a couple movies with my kids. But to me this is what a Christmas vacation for the teacher and the parent mean. It means grabbing on tightly to those two cherished weeks and going for a wild ride where everything is possible.

Happy holidays to all my fellow teachers and their families! Enjoy this time to reconnect, get organized, rediscover a hobby and breathe deeply before it all starts over again.