Alliance for Catholic Education
As the school year starts to wind down, teachers know all too well the restlessness that resides in our classrooms. The weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer, and the kids are eager for summer break. It’s growing harder to sit still and write papers or equations while the birds are chirping and the sun is shining. Little do the kids know, the teachers are feeling the effects of spring fever right along with them.
While we teachers get to manage the chaos in our classrooms that is spring fever, there’s also a growing awareness in all of us that change is coming. With summer comes changes in our routines, habits, and even our cities and roommates. ACE 31 is preparing for their two year journey to come to a close. We’re finding jobs, applying to graduate programs, interviewing, and trying to make the best of the last few weeks in our second home. ACE 32 is finishing their first year of teaching, going home (or straight to Notre Dame’s campus!) and jumping right into their second, hectic ACE summer. Finally, our ACE 33’s are graduating college, working, catching up with home friends or traveling, and getting ready for a summer unlike any they’ve ever had.
Between all of those different journeys happening right now, that theme of impending change is present in all of them. At times the future feels full of possibility, while in other moments it feels completely overwhelming. In many ways, it’s something our students can relate to. Changing classroom teachers, moving to the next grades, and having their routines upended brings anxiety and a sense of restlessness. They too, albeit in a different way, know that change is coming.
In these moments, I have found myself returning to that idea of trust.
Teaching will show you, very quickly I might add, that most things don’t go according to plan. Lessons don’t go as intended, students do poorly on assignments you felt you prepared them for, schedules change in ways that feel random. Despite knowing that things don’t always go how we thought they would, we expect God to show us the roadmap. More often than not, though, God asks us to simply keep moving forward, trusting that He is already present in whatever comes next for us.
The spring fever that many of us might be experiencing right now may not have an easy solution. There’s not going to be a perfect fix to get our students to sit still (though I’m open to suggestions). Still, trusting in God’s plan for our lives and moving one step at a time is the only way through. The future becomes much less overwhelming when you truly believe that He will never abandon you, that He loves you, and has a plan for your life.
So, as we leave behind the familiar to embrace the new, we might feel uncertainty. But, we should also feel hope. It is in these moments of restlessness, transition, and change that God is already at work preparing us for what comes next.