Tabula Rasa

This week I received my "summer mail envelope." For those of you unfamiliar with this rite, it is a large, thick, pile of letters, schedules, calendars, fliers and directives – everything you need to know before coming back to school. It is filled with equal parts excitement and dread. My envelope was completely empty and stamped by the USPS as having been received that way.

It was perhaps the best summer mail envelope I have received in 20 something years.

A new school year presents new opportunities. It always has. When you're a kid it's the excitement of seeing your friends again after a long separation dressed in spiffy new duds a size bigger than before, the new notebooks with their promise of soon being filled with something important in a new adaptation of one's old handwriting, the new teacher "...I'm going to show her (him) my real stuff." When you're a teacher it's the resolve that this year you will figure out a system that really works for everyone in the class, and it will be a system that doesn't require late nights and weekends. This will be the year that you will have fun with your students. This will be the year you will iron out the kinks and overcome your weaknesses as a teacher.

Take this empty envelope as a sign. We can create something new this year.

Who is with me on this? What will it take to make it happen? If those questions can be answered we are well on our way. It will come out of the best that is already in place.