Teacher game day!

I get way anxious during summer vacation if I don’t have stuff to do. And that stuff can’t be, like, painting various rooms of my house. I need stuff that involves other people; otherwise, I start calling my husband at noon, saying, “What’re you doing?” and “When’re you coming home?” And since he, y’know, works during the summer, I imagine phone calls like that are majorly annoying.

So I’ve been working on having something that involves human contact at least every other day. I had a minor panic attack on Monday of this week when I realized I had absolutely no plans until Thursday. A few text messages and a Facebook status update later, I was booked with at least two events every day through next Tuesday.

Today was a teacher game day.

We started this two weeks ago and are doing it every couple of weeks for the rest of the summer. I have a group of friends with whom I did my certification program; we’re a mix of English, science, and social studies folk (we had a math guy, but he moved, and we didn’t like any of the foreign language people). We’ve always gotten together every couple of months for happy hours to gripe and brag and drink and reassure each other, but even happy hours get expensive and we’re trying to not spend much extra money beyond normal school year spending this summer. So we’re rotating houses, making it a potluck, and playing board games. It. Is. AWESOME. We’re talking about teaching hardly at all!

Don’t get me wrong – I cherish (need, even) our school year commiserations. But it’s summer, and it’s nice to find other topics of conversation, like guys (or girls, but today happened to be all female), politics, summer fun, movies, music…it’s like we’re real people again! We’ve played Apples to Apples, Scattergories, and Catch Phrase, and next time we’re adding Taboo and Scrabble. It’s reminded us that, yeah, we actually like each other and have things in common beyond teaching.

Because being a teacher is a huge part of my identity, and same for my friends, but I’m also someone who enjoys water parks, and the movie I Love You, Man (have you seen it? If not, seriously, you gotta check it out – best bromance ever and Paul Rudd and Jason Segal are absurdly charming in it. And the tagline “He needed a best man…he got the worst” is a lie that makes it seem like it’s going to be a terrible and offensive film, when really it is simply delightful), and can squeal with glee when a friend finally hooks up with the guy she’s been digging for months…

We’re teachers AND people. Spending some time nurturing the latter aspect can only make us better at the former.

(Photo credit to Pensiero, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pensiero/487117524/)