Unexpected Changes

I expected my summer to unfold in a particular way. Using a suggestion from Angela Watson, I had established a focus for each week that would last me the rest of the summer months:

• June 28-July 4: Planning and Reorganizing
  Coming up with my summer vision, doing my PowerSheets quarterly refresh, reorganizing my main filing cabinet, putting my office back together after the ceiling leak
• July 5-July 11: Refresh 1
  This meant taking a real vacation–at home of course, because COVID–and giving myself permission to just rest and take it easy.
• July 12-18: Household Loose Ends
  The deep cleaning and miscellaneous tasks that I always put off during the school year
• July 19-25: Media Studies
  Creating a year plan and proposal for a Media Studies course I’d like to offer as an elective
• July 26-Aug 1: Professional Refresh
  Taking a week to stop and reflect on who I am as a teacher, what I want to achieve in the classroom and what my priorities will be in this unpredictable fall
• Aug. 2-Aug. 8: Diversity Planning
  Rebuilding my curriculum to do a better job at reflecting diversity and anti-racist educational goals
• Aug. 9-15: Refresh 2 – Art Week
  Another restful week, this time centered on viewing and creating works of art with my best friend
• Aug. 16-22: Debate Camp
  I’ll be attending virtually, as a coach.

That would bring me straight into my Ped Days that begin the school year.

I was pretty happy with this plan and I hoped it would help me avoid my frequent summer lethargy. However, partway through “Household Loose Ends” week, BAM! Some major personal developments arrived to shake everything up.

The one that requires the most work? We found the house we want to buy: recently renovated in an ideal neighbourhood, and ready to be occupied ASAP. We plan to move in right before school starts. Everything else has been put aside in order to conduct the negotiation process, secure financing (and provide the extensive documentation necessary for that), schedule inspections, plus notary, insurance, etc. This also means that I will be spending much of the time between now and moving day on the apartment: packing, cleaning, and trying to find a new tenant to finish out the lease.

Finding a house has been one of our major life goals for 2020. It was waylaid for a few months by the pandemic, but we were surprised to find a house we loved so quickly–and for it to be ready for occupation so soon after we found it. This is a much bigger priority than many of the work-related goals I had hoped to fulfill this summer, so I have no qualms about displacing them. Well, maybe that’s not strictly true. I do feel a sort of twinge of something like guilt that I won’t be able to give them the attention I meant to, but I know that I’m making room for something I know will really matter to me in the long term.

Maybe next year?