Working

The desk hides under sheaves of papers. It was my desk. Will be, I guess, until next week. Strange to think how I can spend a year at a place and then leave, the school still going on much as it had before. It's a good thing.
It was a good year. Not a great year, or an easy year, but a good year still. I look at the rows of textbooks on the shelves across from me and remember. I see my students trying to succeed, or sometimes even trying to get out of succeeding, and I hear their concerns and triumphs echoing in the almost-empty classroom. I will miss them.
It will be strange, this new work; no work to grade, no school programs to prepare for, no staff meetings every Wednesday. And yet, amidst the reluctance to leave teaching after only a year, I find my heart hopeful. Excited. Expectant.