September means faculty meetings and preparation for students at my little boarding school in the Adirondacks. It also means I’m winding down my online teaching and tutoring for the summer.
The other night, during my Bridging the Gap to 7th Grade Writing class, I asked the first student who showed up, “What’s something adults do that you consider boring?”
He responded, “I went to a party in July and my friends and I were doing cannonballs into the pool. When we got out to get some snacks and take a break, I spied on the adults sitting around on the porch. I thought I’d hear something interesting, but instead all they said was ‘Blah, blah, blah THE WEATHER, blah, blah, blah, GAS PRICES, and blah, blah, blah, MY KNEES.’ So boring.”
When I returned to campus for the first day of meetings, everyone huddled around the coffee, pulling each other into hugs and then stepped back to comment about…the sudden dip in temperature, sun forecasted for later in the afternoon, and the thunderstorms threatening the prospective social gathering on the Lake Hill later in the week. We picked things up the following day with tales of shortened road trips and shoulder stretches to increase one’s range of motion.
We’re an exciting bunch.
