What I’ll Miss

• Daily conversations with Little Miss Thing

• Discussing the proper coffee/water ratio

• Tormenting colleagues with my iTunes selections

• “Ummano”

• the never-out jar of mini candy bars on Principal Kate’s desk

• job security and health benefits

• my retirement fund

• being (somewhat) indispensable

• “radical honesty” with Nurse Kate

• watching good people and good teachers do good work

• calling Sheri “Jennifer’s wife”

• “durpa-durpa-durp”, and all other LMT-isms

• The black humor that sustains all of us in special services

• Seeing the success of a K-5 LRC with Meri-Michael so ably at the helm

• The gossip – uh, I mean, the insightful discussion and analysis of the potential ramifications of perceived or suspected adult actions on the well-being and safety of small people and the medications we believe might assist in parental coping and student success


What I Am Pretty Sure I Won’t Miss

• phone calls from absent staff 15 minutes before their shift

• the antics of the High-Five Mucky-Mucks

• unfunded mandates from the federal and state governments

• Personal accountability for carrying out said mandates without adequate materials, training, staff or time

• meetings, meetings, meetings

• making up my own curriculum

• did I mention meetings?

• Frustration of a particular sort

• Mandated Pledge of Allegiance (I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness, but was raised by one, and it still sticks in my craw as gross indoctrination to hear a roomful of children mimic words they don’t understand about unexamined allegiance to anything)

• Taking stuff so I can sleep

• And then there are the meetings . . .