A new school
My career in public education lasted just over a decade. In that time I moved through three provinces and a number of different systems. In only one case day scored a brand new school. Completely new built from the ground up with new seats and new books and new teachers. The ink barely dry on their diplomas. We were a school fed by other schools so there wasn’t even a set of people who knew each other for a lifetime. Novelty. I have a set of memories about that school. Most of them good. We did nothing out of the ordinary and we had a set of buildings because it was an older school. Finding our way to the shops in the art area and the gymnasium all required skills that I had not mastered when I arrived. My year went well and come the month of May I received word that my family was moving yet again to another province. With that I visited the front office for the first and last time to do a closing interview with the school principal and to be wished success in my further studies because that’s what principals do with students they do not know. There were no school clothes or big fancy musical moments. This was a smaller school in a smaller province and in the end when I bid it farewell, I had no expectations of ever returning. And so I did not. I wonder where they all are now. Those teachers and students and dreams. It all seems like a long time ago. What I remember best is to walk up and down the long hills to get home at the end of the day.
