Lost in space

There is something very jarring about being on a staff in which, at 41, you are the most senior teacher.

I could say that what's different is what we do on weekends -- I try to replace joint fluid with vitamin supplements and my younger colleagues go out and engage in activities. That's not it, however. Many colleagues older than myself are far more spry. There is some truth to what might be a stereotypical complaint: I feel as though I'm a third-tour sergeant among first-tour infantry. Battles have made me less self-assured, though better prepared. I'll know when to jump and when not to, but I also know that there are always challenges which you cannot predict. But, that's not the complete source of my unease. A lot of it has to do with knowing what preconceived ideas younger teachers sometimes have about older ones. Not a small part of it has to do with the fact that I know there are senior teachers out there who don't have positions with whom I could be working if the irrational budgets that Bloom/Klein has created did not make that impossible.

Yet none of these feels completely right. Perhaps the biggest part of it, is that I've never experienced this before. I've never been without people senior to me and without contemporaries. It's unnatural.