My family's life is hectic, some might say crazy. We are fortunate to live in a beautiful area in the mountains outside of Denver. For the last 17 years I have taught in a suburb of Denver located about 45 minutes from home. My children attended school in the same town that I taught in. For the last three years, my son has been swimming on a team that practices six days a week about thirty minutes away both from where we live and where we go to school. What this amounts to is a whole lot of driving and a whole lot of early mornings and late nights. Last year, I started to think about how we could simply our hectic lives. I knew that my children would be transitioning into high school and middle school respectively and I was beginning to worry that the days, and sometimes nights, that we spent on the run would start to take their toll. At the same time, I was beginning to feel like I needed to expand my horizons professionally. We love where we live so leaving that special mountain home was never an option on our road to simplification. What started to make more and more sense though was getting our respective schools and sports into one place.
I set the ball in motion to accomplish this last December but all of the pieces of the puzzle did not find their way together until recently. The puzzle is now complete. Both my children and I will start the upcoming school year in a new school district. My new district, Boulder Valley, has an amazing reputation for innovation and forward thinking. As I continue to meet my fellow staff members at my new school, Casey Middle School, I am equally impressed by their commitment to ensuring that every student that walks through the doors of Casey feels safe and is challenged, engaged and ultimately learning. I will still be teaching middle school science but will now get the opportunity to work with sixth graders and eighth graders (I have been working with seventh graders up to this point). My teaching focus will be on the earth and physical sciences. My daughter will be attending a high school right down the street from me and my son will be a seventh grader in the school where I will be teaching. At the same time, both of my children have decided to join sports teams in Boulder, the town where they will go to school.
It will be a fresh start for all three of us in many important aspects of our lives. There's something to be said about starting over. Sure it's scary, but at the same time, I'm finding it quite refreshing and inspiring. It's a chance to let go of what hasn't been working and to embrace change. Fresh starts provide the opportunity to attempt new things. It's a chance to increase our worldviews and experience new opportunities. I've always loved to change things up; that's probably one of the reasons why my hair color changes every few months. I'm excited to see what kinds of doors this rather large series of changes will open up for my family. I'm looking forward to stepping through these doorways and discovering what lies on the other side.
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