I had the incredible good fortune to do entirely too many things this past school year.

First and foremost, I had a teaching year where I didn’t have to spend my prep time laying on a couch.* I already knew that the upside to being sick was the moment when you  begin to feel better. Turns out that is extra true for bone surgery.

Physical improvement also meant I had something to give to helping run a slate for union leadership. Two years prior, the Caucus of Working Educators was a nebulous idea, but one that was sorely needed in a town that hadn’t seen any kind of internal union election in eight years, and had essentially been a one-party union for decades. If you ever have the chance to make the world more democratic: do it. If it’s a struggle, even better. If you win the vote, great. If you don’t, you will have still won so much.

Other things happened, too.

In February, SLA hosted a citywide PD day for district teachers from dozens of schools. We blew past our projected attendance and a few schools are directly adopting some of our best practices, advisory and Student Assistant Teaching, as a result of their experiences that day. Having this event felt like the best kind of reunion–so many good people from so many buildings coming together and sharing their best work.

In March, I helped organize the biggest single meeting SLA has ever hosted, about the state of our current home (which we do not own) and where the future might take us. Over 700 people lined up around the block to show their support, in many cases taking to the mic and sharing their many truths about how SLA and its location mean the world to them. We all wore name tags, and students from the first class got to meet the current freshmen got to meet parents of all years got to meet community partners got to meet former teachers who came out to support.

In April, I got to go to the White House, again (thank you, Jose) — this time as a guest to honor the Teachers of the Year from every state. There were about 300 people packed into the East Room, elbowing each other to get a look at the three speakers on stage, all African-American: The President, The Secretary of Education, and Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes.

“This is the last time we’re doing this,” Obama said. “We figured we should make it a blowout.”

In May, SLA held the first-ever Alumni Organizing Meeting for the six graduated classes of SLA. Thirty-five kids showed up, way more than I expected. With the oldest of them being all of 25, they wanted to know what the school needed–no really, what do we need? A prime piece of Center City real estate and many millions of dollars for a building, I told them. They’re on it.

In June, I hugged my second set of advisees as they crossed the stage at graduation. I started to see my life in cycles of four years. How many left before I retire? How many left before I die? It didn’t seem absurd, all of a sudden. When I started this job, I didn’t have a single thought about how it might affect the rest of my life. Now I see that it already has. For me, SLA has become a place both flat and endless. Flat in that I sometimes feel like I am experiencing every version of it at once, stacked up and playing simultaneously in my mind (see: March) and that I also, for the first time, imagine generations forward into its impact on this city (see: May).

If this is what it means to be a veteran teacher, I’ll take it.

*Not that I didn’t choose to lay on a couch at work at all this year. I definitely did that.