And so it begins.
First a couple of e-mails about schedule changes, then a trip to school with the kids to unpack new ancillary books. Then it’s student teacher assignments, room changes, writing new objectives and figuring out the desktop on the new computers. Next week these small chips in the dam will explode into a deluge of questions, issues and tasks and the new school year floods into our lives.
Amidst the clichés in the Principal and Superintendent’s letters and the shameless marketing of an 18 billion dollar back to school season is the one true benefit to a traditional (read “19th century agricultural”) schedule; every new school year starts clean. Teacher’s have detoxed, professionally developed and recharged their batteries, while students have (hopefully) let the world teach them something.
As I walk down the bright polished floors of clean hallways and stack textbooks in classrooms I’m a little maudlin about the loss of the summer and new cherished memories of time with my children. Yet, getting back into the game with a fresh start is as invigorating as that first cool snap of an Autumn breeze.
I’m reminded of an old adage from my father, “take it easy, greasy – you have a long way to slide.”