And on this breezy morning, I am getting ready for teacher orientation. New teacher training. First-year teacher training. That’s me.

I show up to school in my ponytail and sleepy-looking face and sit at a desk along with my fellow newbie teachers. We’re here to learn how to be the one who teaches. My last hurrah as a student, if you will.

I look around. There are not many of us, just enough to fill the small room. But we’re an eclectic group: some bubbies, a smattering of mommies, and a few young ones like me.

Yes, I’m young. Not graduated-this-year young. I graduated a few years ago, though the ponytail probably didn’t help.

The ponytail. What?

It hadn’t been much of a thought as I ran out of the house, jumped into my car, and piled into the school this early summer morning. But now as I sit here, I keep tracing my fingers through my hair, feeling the incongruity. I’m here with my fellow new coworkers, teachers-to-be, all of us, and I’m looking student-like at best.

But it was morning, a tired, early morning, and no one really cares, do they? Also, it’s my last grasp at summer, at the freedom to do as I please.

I can see summer fizzle away in real time.

Notebooks replacing bathing suits. Pencil cases for towels, and the ever-present sunscreen smell has begun fading away.

Goodbye, camp; hello school.

For me, it’s teacher bag season. Goodbye college knapsack. Goodbye chilled outfits, goodbye being just another face in the crowd.

This teacher thing isn’t a joke, you know.

Next year, I will be in the company of discerning, curious, all-noticing, young adults. Who will ponder my age as much as they survey my clothing. In school and out of it, my life will become their conversation fodder.

Hello, pleated skirts and sweaters and loafers. Gradebooks and tests and a heavy responsibility.

I can feel the school year feeling creeping up on me.

Good training, I think as I gather my things. We’d learned the foundations of creating an effective lesson, establishing credibility, having a rapport with the students. Things you learn over a lifetime of teaching, of studying what it means to teach. It all swirls through my head as I stand up to leave. Somehow, I know everything they’ve said is right and true and familiar — I can see my own teachers’ skills in my notes. Still, it all feels a bit vaporous. My only point of reference is being a student, and I can’t totally flip my vantage point to see from the other side of the desk.

I know the real training will start when I’m standing in front of the room with 20 curious, cautious sets of eyes staring at me, watching my every move.

I don’t know what the school year will bring. I hope it’s a good year, for me and for my charges. I hope it is mutually enriching for both of us, student and teacher alike. I return home, return to my books, a hodgepodge of educational materials, trying to take what I learned and inject it into my still fuzzy lesson plans.

AS the day darkens into night and I put my books away to be conquered some other time, I step outside, feel the chill flick through my hair, and it dawns on me.

There is one more goodbye that must be said. I touch my ponytail, feel my last holdout of carefree youth.

Goodbye, ponytail, goodbye. You’ve served me well until now, but I have teens to impress.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 908)