Hail to the Summer

    When I began teaching, I heard a saying from an elderly teacher, who was teaching through his last year, that I thought was very funny. It goes something like this, "There are three main reasons that most teachers, teach and they are June, July, and August." You may have heard it told another way, but it is basically all the same, teachers need the summer. I didn't quite understand then, but  every year I teach, the more I need the summer.

   

     If you are a teacher, you will understand. It's not that teaching is harder than any other job, it's that it is so different. It is all-consuming. You don't leave it at work. You aren't "through with it at the end of your shift". You bring it home. You bring it on vacation. You prepare for it over the breaks. You grade over the holidays. You take classes during the summer. It is like in Spanish the difference between the two verbs for the phrase, "to be: ser o estar". One is that you happen to be a construction worker, or you are going to be at the grocery store and the other is that you are in love or you believe something whole-heartedly. Teaching is this whole-heart thing that makes you and you make it. Or, that is at least how I feel.

    So, as the time approaches for school to begin anew like a freight train that I think I can even hear in the night, I want to say: Hail to the Summer. They are two wonderful months. We sleep late. I don't have to shave. We stay up late. We work at Camp. We watch an unhealthy amount of Netflix. I smoke my pipe. We swim in the river. We read books that we scorn at the rest of the year. We have breakfasts that last several hours. We drink pots of coffee. We see family. We eat more ice cream than we should and wash it down with Cherry Cokes. We garden. We hide from the heat. We go on vacations courtesy of our too-gracious families. We really live it up. We rediscover all the things that are put on the backburner the other 10 months of the year. It is the summertime and it is awesome. I am so glad to get to be a teacher and have the time off. I know it is a priviledge.

  The reason for this post is to celebrate Summer and to acknowledge the fact that I haven't posted in a while. I know. I hope I was missed, but understand if I wasn't.  I've been too busy with a variety of time-filling activities or "units of time" as Hugh Grant calls them in the movie, "About a Boy". And I hope you have been too. But now, I'm back and I'm rested and ready to write. I hope you are ready to read and comment.

Still Celebrating 4 days of Summer,

David