I’ve had my shots and I may do some afternoons this spring, but here are the facts: I don’t need that extra $10,000 to $12,000 a year. I’ve been proving that all this year. I’ve gotten used to going to bed at midnight and waking up between 8 and 9 A.M. I’m enjoying learning Adobe Photoshop right now and thinking of taking a class. I might be pretty much close to done with teaching on a regular basis, in no small part because I’ve fallen out of the habit of teaching, which I kept up after I retired because I LIKED teaching — but not the pay and not getting up. I’m sure I am not alone. I might begin subbing again soon. I might not.

I think I am close to being one of the many, many “former” teachers.

Eduhonesty: The sub crisis will not pass with vaccinations. It will not become one more blip on the COVID radar for years. Many of the missing subs had fallen right out of teaching into a retirement of less frequent teaching with more breaks and the bonus of half-day work days. We never truly left teaching. But in 2020 and 2021, we stayed home, and here’s what I learned: baking bread, painting watercolors, making collages, blogging, learning software, zooming educational webinars, walking dogs, writing poetry, and binge-watching TV tend to be extremely pleasant ways to spend time. I have developed all sorts of hobbies. When I retired, I had no idea what to do with my time, so I kept teaching. Now I fill all my time easily.

I’d guess there are lots of people like me. I don’t think we will be going back, not often anyway. Due to the shortage, free time has mostly disappeared from the sub schedule — schools need more certified bodies in classrooms every hour of every day — and I don’t want to have to worry about when I will be able to go to the bathroom. Been there, done that.

I still don’t know how the next year will play out. The new normal is not normal at all. Retired teachers don’t know what to do with those socially-distanced, no-contact classrooms, and I expect the old guard will mostly duck that weirdness, again because the sub shortage has increased work demands but not yet the already-paltry pay. In the meantime, baking bread has taken off so ferociously that one would think yeast had just been invented, and friends keep sending me texts and emails for virtual art classes, science webinars and science fiction conventions.

Here’s hoping our vaccinations bring the new normal into something more approximating the times we remember before 2020. Some days, I really do want back into that classroom.

Many hugs from Jocelyn Turner, who finally stuck her name into this blog a few weeks ago.

P.S. Lesson of the week: If a cookie recipe has the word “healthy” in the title, that’s not the recipe you want.

P.S.S. Please opt out of testing this year if you can, or help others to do so. Those tests have been clobbering lower-scoring kids’ psyches. Yes, we took them when we were kids, but the emphasis was not there. In fact, my brother recently asked me if we had even taken standardized tests. He could not remember. But today’s kids will remember because we are now building a whole year’s instruction around preparing for those tests, and we are even discussing scores with children later to “help them improve academically.” I believe we are mostly “helping” to create anxiety disorders instead — and this has to stop. We are driving some children much too hard for little or no benefit to create “data-driven” instruction that doesn’t seem to be working anyway.