There are exactly three days left, and one weekend, until the inevitable chaos that is the beginning of a new school year.
Not that I’m counting.
The thing is, I don’t need to count. There are way too many people counting for me, on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. They are bemoaning the loss of these lazy days of summer whilst cheerily advertising sales on Teachers Pay Teachers. And other sites. They are cleaning their classrooms (again!) and creating posters and putting up beautiful, award-worthy decorations.
Me?
I am reflecting, deeply, and physically doing…nothing. I have taken a week off from boxing. I am checking my email and then shutting down my laptop to spend another hour swinging outside in the hammock.
Reading?
No.
Thinking.
Reflecting.
When the time comes, and it certainly is coming, I will Do All the Things. I will smile and hug and reassure parents who walk their brand-new sixth grade children right to my very door twenty minutes before the first bell rings. My classroom will magically be put together, in its own Spartan way, awaiting student work to make it bright, make it ours.
For now, I am enjoying this last little bit of time to recharge, re-center, and remember why it is that I love the end of summer so much.
storyteaching 
best enjoy your free time while you still can.
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Anticipation of fall. Remembering when summers were real and all your needed for genuine escape was a bicycle, a book or three and maybe a record or tape player…When you were that kid standing in your doorway and couldn’t wait to make your mark on the classroom and your classmates. Never in your wildest dreams did you see a hammock in August as a reflecting pool full of the pennies you tossed to get here, how maybe if you’d tossed them differently what here might look like…And all you can do is get your wheels aligned, hope the gas you took the time to put in your tank will get you where your bike once went, and carry that into your day. Teachers are under paid, underappreciated over achievers. The world still romantics. That’s you’re ‘here’.
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Aww, Phil, this is truly poetic–what a gift. Thank you. And yes, I was that kid riding my bike six miles in from the outskirts of town just to go the library, eating dust down dirt roads to stop at a friend’s house, watching the sun wane and wondering how fast I could make it back home.
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