Monday, August 4, 2025
Saturday, August 2, 2025
Remembering Getting Ready for the School Year
In 25 years of teaching, August 1 was always a significant date.
It marked the end of reading just for fun and pleasure, and writing whatever work had been my focus - a short story, play, that blasted novel I never seem ever to finish.
My summer reading had already included new works I would be teaching, or rereading some that I would be teaching again. But now I would begin focusing on works I would be teaching.
Some teachers create detailed lesson plans. They would plot out the entire year. But that was not my style. I would plan what works I would be teaching, so I knew the order and about when I would be teaching them. But day-to-day plans - no.
What I would be doing is researching all the works and history surrounding the literature I would be teaching.
For example, if I know I would be teaching Uncle Tom’s Cabin that year, I’d try to find information about the slave trade, collections of slave songs, descriptions of the Underground Railroad, local links to the Railroad, the poems and essays of other writers dealing with the issue at that time, and so on.
August would also visits to my classroom, ordering needed supplies, making sure we had enough books available for my students, making photocopies, a least one faculty, a department meeting and in-service, and so on.
Later in the month I would go in to set up my classroom. At the last school where I taught, I built bookshelves to hold all the books I wanted to make available for my students. When I retired, I donated those shelves and many of those books to the school.
And now, in retirement, I read only what I want to read or think I should read. No lesson planning or background research, No school workshops and meetings.
I’m enjoying retirement, But part of me misses those days. I miss the students and the camaraderie of fellow teachers.
And I don’t have a handy excuse any more for not finishing that blasted novel!
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