Dear Members and Colleagues:
During the first November of my career in education, I believe it rained for all thirty days. The kids and I spent the entire month without recess, without outdoor PE, and without the ability to go outside our classroom’s back door and do the physical activities like spelling aerobics that were my saving grace as a first-year teacher. Even our walk to lunch was affected, as the county had built our school in that glorious era of breezeways-instead-of-hallways. We got soaked if we walked anywhere other than the middle of the breezeway, which was obviously a goal for half the members of my class.
I finally reached a breaking point. My mother suggested I call her friend Jeanne, who happened to be my own kindergarten teacher. When I explained that I just didn’t know what to do, that I was so tired of being trapped inside the building, and the poor kids were miserable, she laughed and told me that she was feeling the exact same way. I was shocked! This saint of a woman had been teaching a decade longer than I had been alive; how could she possibly be feeling as stressed and beleaguered as I did? That ten-minute phone call did more to bolster my spirits and restore my faith in my calling as a teacher than Jeanne knew, though I did have the opportunity to thank her for it many years later.
For many of us, GCSS provides a similar sort of reassurance and morale-boosting. I know I’m not alone in leaving our conference each year feeling refreshed and re-invigorated, with a renewed passion for the subject I love. This year, I attended a session on a topic far outside of my current teaching responsibilities, and I immediately wished I could take over that course for a week to implement what I had learned about how to better teach the Age of Jackson. Additionally, the chance to find someone sitting next to you in a session who understands your teaching experience – who hears your struggles of a rainy November and can relate – is part of what makes our time together irreplaceable (and worth every minute of writing sub plans).
Thank you to everyone who attended this past year’s conference! The amazing team who puts it together is already hard at work to ensure that next year’s experience will be similarly inspiring and impactful. Your GCSS Board of Trustees has spent the last few years developing additional resources for professional learning and mentoring, so keep an eye on our website and the monthly newsletters to learn more about those opportunities. We are grateful for our growing membership, for our dedicated volunteers, and for the chance to learn together.
On behalf of the Board, I wish you all the best!
Sarah Brown
