Of Blogging and Running and Teaching

While out running Thursday morning before school, I composed an entire blog entry in my head. It was brilliant and witty and poignant and timely--all about how blessed I feel to be able to follow my teaching vocation in a great school with fantastic opportunities to push myself to excel in my classroom. But then school started. And then I took 10 -year- old to football practice, to pick out an instrument, daughter to college, 8- year -old to birthday party, and now, 72 hours later I'm tired, and I can't for the life of me remember what I was going to write. Something about how if one thinks too much about the awesome responsibility it is to be a teacher, the realization can be paralyzing. Also, I think I was going to discuss when I finally figured-out the difference between teaching and learning. And, somewhere in all of that glorious musing I was going to offer that every time I think of the title of my Dad's favorite book, "To Serve Them All My Days" (a book about a teacher at a boys' prep school) I get the goosebumps just running the words through my head. Oh yes, and there was something about being a sucker for teacher movies--you know, Dead Poet's Society, Mr. Holland's Opus, Stand and Deliver . . . Unfortunately, all of this was much more coherent at 5:00 am while I was pounding through 2 miles in the dark. This strikes me as akin to lesson planning in the shower, grading papers at fall baseball practice, and buying justonemorething for my classroom each time I stop at Target. Hm. School has indeed started. (Hip Hip!)