Don't get me wrong--

I get a little down in September and it's NOT because I don't love what I do.

It's because I love my summers. Long mornings, being fit once again, naps, BOOKS. I get down because all that disappears AND because I start all over again.

Come June, the kids and I have become a strange learning family. We have all kinds of shorthand and inside jokes. They know when I am joking around and when I am deadly serious. They can read my face and body language. They ask about my family and they bring me chocolate and cookies. And I can read them, as well.

Come September,  I am playing to a tough crowd. I crack all sorts of hiLARious jokes and they are scared to laugh--I'm serious--they will snigger into their hands because "what if this crazy teacher lady isn't trying to make us laugh and we get in trouble?" I forget how difficult it is to cleanly launch a class on a successful learning trajectory, how tough it is to teach them that we often enjoy our learning, but Fun is not the point--LEARNING is the point.

It's all good by October.  The cookies start coming, and they learn they can joke back and we laugh with abandon as long as we stay en pointe.

Here's to a new year with kids who catch on quickly!

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Have a nightmare when you are little, and you wake up, run to your parents' bedroom and get some immediate comfort there. I had this year's first school dream--nightmare, really--last night, with no Mommy in sight. Glad the alarm went off, because while I was persevering in my dream, it was NO FUN. (Understatement.)

I'd been last-minute transferred to another site;

Of course no rosters;

Thrown into a classroom that wasn't kid-ready, or me-ready;

After the bell had rung.

Next door was a band room that kept the door open.

On the other side of my room was a huge room that kids could just slip into unnoticed because I had no rosters and didn't know who my kids were.

I was desperately obeying the First Rule of Middle School Teaching: "Stay calm." But there was no way I could obey The Second Rule of Middle School Teaching, "Be over prepared," because, well, last-minute transfer to a crazy room after the bell.

I suppose it could have been worse. I mean, at least I had my clothes on, right??