Summer and Autumn, Side by Side

As mentioned before, in earlier posts in August, this is a promising time for teachers.  New goals, new thoughts, new starts.  Reunions with old students and introductions to new ones are right around the corner. 

Yesterday I saw a student at school, and she told me how excited she is for the D.C. trip next year.  It stopped me in my tracks.  What??  There is another D.C. trip next year?  Of course there is.  I deliberately introduce this trip to 7th graders in a very dramatic way to build momentum.  But I certainly haven't registered that in my own mind.  That trip is intense.  But its cycle starts again. 

It's also, I remember now, a wistful time. Seasons change, and even when they're lovely, they take some getting used to.

I like one fell swoop kind of living, which is not always possible in this world, but it's what I am doing now.  I'm vacillating lately between being extremely silly and loopy in one moment and intensely focused in the next.  I'm starting to have crazy dreams again.  People close to me have noticed this because in general you're supposed to have better balance in the day.  When I see this very weird side of me come out around all of my favorite people, it has made me wonder more about my patterns and personality as an old lady.  My future tendencies seem very predictable lately. 



It's the internal anticipation of the change of the seasons.  And it's weird.

I'm doing a complete re haul of the curriculum I've been using, and it's very clear to me that I could be one of those people who works for 24 hours on something and forgets to eat and sleep and starts talking to themselves.  Very easily.  

But it's still summer, and I'm not completely in school mode until the required date of August 29.  So, after I go to school and organize things for the next 10 years of teaching, I'm still doing wonderfully playful things like......

...going to the Richfield pool!!! 

All summer this has been a must see location.  Maddie pretty much runs this place in the summer, and yesterday I went with friends from school to the pool.  It was so fun.  We all got very juvenile in our excitement about the water slide.  We had underwater tea parties, and critiqued underwater handstands.  We held races for gold, silver, and bronze distinctions.  We watched Maddie lay the smack down on someone about a fight over goggles.  We took her advice for going down the slide faster.  I got called out by a lifeguard (who learned that I am a rule follower and didn't want to be an adult, and a friend of Maddie, who got in trouble...awkward).  

This picture (above) is the one we took when we first got to the pool.  So I am happy to report that, despite crazy dreams about curriculum and the wistful feeling that shows up throughout the day, summer adventures still abound.


I am striking out into this day with an Anne quote. 

"She had...the glimmerings of a sense of humour - which is simply another name for a sense of the fitness of things."
— Lucy Maud Montgomery

P.S.  I talked with another student (new to my classroom) this week and she told me she has begun to read the Anne books.  She thinks that they are too wordy.  Just get to the point!  There are so many adjectives describing the world! 

I then said, "It's tough to imagine Anne living in our practical world all of the time.  She's very magical in her thoughts."  (I didn't tell her I just blogged about this very thing.  That would be weird.) Later, I decided I think she's still kindred spirits with Anne because she described to me, in good detail, how wonderful it would be to be able to have a view of the sea nearby. 

Actually, she and I sound the very same.

She has to keep reading the book.  She won't let herself quit.  I am going to try to convince her, slowly, carefully, over time, that Anne's whimsical thoughts have a very nice place in our world at St.Croix Prep too, even when we gaze at the St. Croix instead of the sea.