What I Don't Miss

and a few things I do

Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

As many of you know, I taught for 30 years. Thirty years! Even though I lived it, I can’t believe I did it for three whole decades.

I left that career behind me three years ago in May and have loved every single minute since then. If I were still teaching, today would be my first back-to-school work day. Instead of sitting through boring meetings and rushing to get my classroom ready for students next week, I’m sitting here with the window open next to me and the fresh air wafting across my keyboard as I type, and I’m doing it on my own time and at my own pace.

People often ask me if I miss teaching. Sure, there are a few things I miss about it, but the resounding answer to that question is NO.

Photo by Xavi Cabrera on Unsplash

The main thing I do not miss about teaching and about school in general is the noise. Teenagers are noisy, noisy, noisy creatures. Right now, the only noises I hear are my fingers on the keys, a wind chime outside, a couple doves cooing, some cars in the distance on the highway, and the dogs making occasional snores as they sleep at my feet. This is bliss.

I was reminded of how noisy a roomful of teenagers is just the other day. I decided to go to the YMCA to swim laps. After that, I went to the walking track for a bit. On my way down the hallway, I passed two opens doors on either side of me. To the right was a gymnasium, and in there were a few people bouncing balls and shooting hoops and even yelling to each other, but the noise they made was muffled by the sheer din of loud chatter emanating from the room to my left.

In that room, there were about fifteen girls — I’d say they might have all been about 12 years old, give or take. Oh my goodness, was there noise coming from that room! I even clapped my hand to my ear as I passed them because they were so darn loud. I immediately let out a sigh of relief that I no longer have to deal with the kind of noise that a roomful of teenagers creates. It’s different than other chatter because kids around that age don’t understand the need for volume control on their voices, or they just don’t know how to do it.

The older I get, the more I crave quiet, and quiet is hard to come by in schools. It happens, but it doesn’t last very long. Now, I go all day with complete quiet in my home, and I get a lot of things done in that silence.

There’s a saying of “I can’t hear myself think,” and I’m one of those people that when it’s really noisy, I absolutely cannot do mental tasks. I don’t understand how people write with music playing or the TV on or in a loud coffee shop.

People like to joke about old people who will turn the radio down when they are driving and trying to concentrate upon finding an address. Well, I’m one of those old people, but I’ve been doing that since I was young. Not all that long ago, I read a report about the myth of multi-tasking, and in that story, this very thing came up, and the author wrote that it makes perfect sense to do this because it isn’t possible to focus on two things at once — something I told my students all those years even though they never believed me.

When I was a student, I always preferred to do my homework either at home or in other parts of the school where I could be by myself and away from other students, so I could think and concentrate. When I taught, I struggled to get my own work done during my free period because there was still the noise of the school all around me — and that was never enough time, either — so I brought a lot of work home with me.

I don’t miss those long, long days of teaching, followed by activities that I coached, followed by late nights of trying to catch up and never getting ahead.

I don’t miss teenage attitudes and the bad parenting that has become too much of the norm these days. I don’t miss lesson plans, fire drills, assemblies, staff meetings, bells between classes, school lunches, and all the chaos that goes into each and every day of school.

I do miss some of the staff and seeing them each day. I do miss some of the students and forming relationships that then last into their adulthood. I do miss helping people learn interesting things and, in turn, learning some things myself.

But I don’t miss those things enough to go back to teaching full time. Peace and quiet are great company.

With luck, I will do this writing career for at least 30 years, too.

Today also happens to be National Book Lovers Day.

I’m a book lover, that’s for sure. That’s one of the reasons I write, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been writing my column about books for 14 years now. I’ve written about some of my favorite books like “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “Gone with the Wind,” and “Silas Marner,” and I’ve discovered so many other wonderful books while reading for the column. If you’ve never looked through the full list of books that I’ve covered over those 14 years, it’s on my website. Click here for my website, and then click on the “columns” tab at the top of the page (and then scroll down on the “columns” page to see the full list: tammymarshallauthor.wordpress.com

I hope you love at least one of the six books I’ve written. The seventh is still in the works. Little by little, I’m making progress on it. If you’re a paying subscriber, there’s another portion of it for you below. If you’re not, consider upgrading today.

Until next time. If you’re a teacher, I hope you have a great school year. If you’re sending a kid off to school, remind him or her to use his/her “inside voice” while at school.

Tammy Marshall