13 Years

This picture is from several weeks ago, a rainy day at school. I was walking from the high school to the main office building, and from under the covered walkway, I saw the rainbows.  I really like that one of them is going to the old school bell; it is the bell from the original schoolhouse. On the last day of school every year, the kids are all allowed to right the bell. On graduation night, we take our final group photo of the senior class in front of the bell, and everyone gets to ring it one last time.

I teach in a beautiful place – see all those trees? In the top picture, you can see across the street from my school, and the school property behind the buildings, like my high school, looks like the forest primeval as well.

My school is pretty much in a national park. We are surrounded by different conifers, and the beautiful cedar trees around the school can freaking kill me in the spring and fall with pollen.

This is probably not the best picture, but this is my high school. There are three sets of windows in the front, and the middle set is my classroom. There are six classroom in the building; plus 3 store closets, and a TINY office. Behind the building, you can see the lights for our sports fields, which are in a slight gully behind the school. This picture is from last spring, and I am not entirely sure why I took it…

During the day, with kids running around, it still feels like a park. But the days without students, work days and days I go up to get work done, it is so quiet and peaceful. There is pretty much nothing else in the area other than the school now since I am in rural Oregon and all this area had going for it was timber and the forest service. Timber died awhile ago, and I am not sure how our national parks are going to fare.

But anyways, this is my school. It is beautiful and peaceful, and I cannot believe I have worked here for 13 years.