I received a certificate this week because I’ve been teaching in the district for 20 years. You’d think that I would know what I’m doing after all these years, but as time goes by I feel less certain that I know how to teach.

Teaching is a complex profession. There are not very many jobs like it. During the busy active time, teachers are absorbed with the lives of their students. It’s a job that is hard to contain. You find yourself thinking about what happened in the classroom on and off no matter where you are, or what you’re doing.

The summer break is a time to reorganize. Teaching offers the dual promises of deliverance and redemption. In June we are freed from the responsibility to teach those individuals we came to know during the year (deliverance). But we also begin to think ahead and plan for the students we will meet in 3 months when we are reborn as active teachers once again. In the summer we try to anticipate the problems we expect to run into, and we think about ways to avoid or overcome those difficulties (redemption).

The problem with turning over these new leaves is that the kids who walk through the door in September aren’t the same kids who walked out the door in May. *They* may have done some thinking of their own over the summer. And it may not mesh with the teacher’s thoughts. It’s very easy to plan for theoretical kids. Much more difficult is the task of influencing real ones. Over the summer we tend to develop an agenda for the year to come - based on the kids who we’ve worked with. The kids, whether they know it or not, develop an agenda of their own.

The challenge of doing a good job is one of determining what these agendas are and looking for ways to negotiate them so that we can adapt ours to make it look appealing to the kids, and hope that they buy in. My point of view on this is not common, and I don’t work within the confines of educational or professional standards without some chafing. Flexibility is often mistaken for weakness, or some kind of personal lapse.

My advice: Go in with a plan and more than one backup idea. Don’t expect to accomplish what you set out to do. Look for surprises. Learn from others. Don’t leap to conclusions. Reflect on what happened.

Have a good summer.