An empty bucket begins to fill up.....

I got word this week from the two suburban school districts where I teach that my good gig is up. Both Edina and St. Louis Park require a valid teacher's license, and mine expires this month. I would need 125 hours of continuing education credits to renew the license and I have not accumulated any credits over the past five years since I retired. I have not worried about renewal because I never saw myself teaching five years after I retired and, more to the point, the thought of taking classes makes me gag!



I was shocked and angry about this news so I fired off a letter to the director of human resources in Edina asking why I could not be "grandmothered in," as I know some of their subs are. They informed me that they have had a change in district policy and grandmothering in teachers without valid licensure is no longer done. This is the same district that had me teaching a day after they hired me because they were so short on subs. Nice they can now be so picky.

I have really enjoyed my many days of subbing this past school year. Not every day was great, of course, but most days were fun. I learned a lot from the richest school district in our state. Technology is king in Edina and the schools are so beautiful. I remember subbing one day in a small Edina elementary school and taking the kids out for a short recess they had earned for being so on task and well behaved. As we came out the back door of the school, I thought I had to be in the Northern England countryside. The playground was several acres of rolling hills and trees, trees, trees.

Thanks to Edina, I am now able to navigate my way around all the new technological teaching devices that can make classrooms "very cool" nowadays. It is the "stuff" I could only dream of when I taught in Minneapolis. It has been wonderful to experience all the dramatic technological changes that are out there for school districts with money to burn. Not only do Edina elementary classrooms have lovely playgrounds, teachers who use the latest technological teaching devices, banks of computers along the classroom walls, and more books than a small library resting neatly on the shelves below the windows, most of the children come from homes which provide and then some for the needs children have. All students, even the students bussed in from the city on open enrollment and the new immigrants from all over the world who live in Edina apartments, get the best of the best in this district when it comes to education. If only all children could experience such an education. Fair the world is not -- a truth which I always used to tell my students.

I feel very fortunate to have had all the work I had this year both in St. Louis Park and Edina. Harry and I had huge out-of-pocket medical expenses this year due to Harry's accident and the fact I am not as yet on Medicare. The knee and neck treatments I needed were not covered by my health insurance so I had to pay for them all myself. We are hoping the coming year's challenges do not come in the form of medical issues, but at our age, that may be wishful thinking.

After the news I got this week, the question now becomes what to do next? I really have no idea. Harry points out I am not retirement material at this point, and he may be right. I started working when I was 15, and for the past 45 years I have always worked and/or gone to school. I took a couple of summers off from teaching when Alexis was young and I have had stretches of time since retirement when Harry and I traveled the world. I always knew, however, that I wanted to get back to work. Work, along with shopping, is what I do best. I have developed hobbies I love, but teaching has remained a passion. The good part about subbing has been that I can work when I feel like it and not work when I feel like it. I have found the role of sub to be fun, worthwhile, and not too taxing. The money is not great but it is not bad either.

I recently happened upon an old journal I wrote about 16 years ago. I have a box under our bed of 20+ journals I filled up during some of the darker times of my life. I used to read scores of self-help books and then try to write myself into sanity (guess that didn't work). I found a page in one of these journals that included a list of things I wanted to do in the future. The term "bucket list" had not been invented at that point, but nowadays that is what such a list would be called. The shockingly amazing thing was that I found I have done all the things on this bucket list. (Arthritis of the knee and neck were not on the list, however. Life is nothing without its surprises.) Obviously I did not dream big enough. Today, while my students were taking a test, I started a new bucket list. This time I decided I am going to dream big!!!!!

One of the things I have put on the new bucket list is to have a Westy in my later years, should I get some later years, and always assuming that my elderly and non-dog-owning editor goes first. After traveling to the long list of places I want to see, I will be exhausted, and will need a good excuse for getting up out of my easy chair to walk on my knee replacement. A dog would be perfect! If I can just move fast enough so the dog doesn't pee in the elevator.