This past week I’ve spent a few days back at the school I retired from last June. One day was a straightforward substitute teacher job for the grade I taught for 17 years. The other 3 days I was helping to grade the New York State Assessment Tests that are given by the state to the students every spring. It is 3 days where the students are pulled from regular routine and forced by the state to take time-consuming exams that are, my my opinion, often very poorly thought out. An example of this is penalizing students for not addressing something which was not asked for in the question itself. Yeah. Go NY!

The sometimes frustrating questions aside, it was very nice to see and spend time with some of my former colleagues. I taught beside some of them for over 20 years. I was reminded how dedicated they were. After giving and grading these tests for so many years you might assume a teacher might “dial in” the effort involved in this process. I’m sure there may be some teachers who do this, but not the ones I know. The back and forth, give and take, getting opinions from others over any ambiguous written responses showed me this. Yeah, sitting in a closed conference room trying to decipher sometimes borderline illegible handwriting is not too exciting. Those working with me though, made it much more palatable and yes, even fun.

But like the title of this blog states, you can’t go home again. Thomas Wolfe didn’t lie. Hearing what was happening in their classes now, the struggles that come with a job where you are dealing with 50 plus personalities a day, and the classroom victories, as well, left me feeling like a bit of an outsider. I know it wasn’t intentional on their part, but I no longer work in that job or with them. And there’s a little feeling of loss. But the cookies were good! Real good!

I’ve been doing a lot of editing lately. I hate editing. As a former English teacher, it’s something I thought I would really excel at. And compared to the average man or woman on the street, maybe I do, but not enough. This week, I plan to purchase some software to help in formatting my books. Atticus, if you’re wondering. I don’t expect it to help much with my editing woes, but it should make other aspects of self-publishing easier so I can have more time to devote to the dreaded edits. My problem (one of many) is that everything connected with self-publishing does not exactly come easily to me. It’s at least partially an age thing. I haven’t spent my entire life uploading, downloading, reloading, whatever. My sister, Kara, also an author, reminded me that all these YouTubers showing the masses how simple and easy it is to create, edit, format, find cover art, and present a book have grown up with the tools necessary to do it. Yeah, they have had electronics in their sweaty little hands since elementary school and probably before. So, I plan to struggle on, dinosaur that I am. Wish me luck.