...and so it begins.

Tonight I'm sitting in my kitchen anticipating tomorrow, when once again students will come to fill their lockers at Conway Christian School, and parents will make their pilgrimage to look us over and get a glimpse of what the year holds for the people they love.

For the past year,  I've been a full-time graduate student, substituting in other schools while I learned more about how to help students learn more.  It was a great experience.  Most teachers love to learn, but being a student seated in another teacher's classroom reminded me how students feel:  we don't like it when someone wastes our time, when the rules of engagement are fuzzy, when the teacher is not emotionally present in the classroom, or when some people are treated differently than others.  We enjoy it it when the teacher is excited by her own subject and when it seems that her presentation comes from some new discovery she has made rather than from the pages of a textbook.  We like it when it's obvious that the teacher wants each student to be successful, and we appreciate the teacher who both pushes and encourages through the tough assignments—because when we finish successfully, we feel competent and confident.

I've been trying to think about all those things as I prepare for the students who'll be sitting in my classroom this year. I want them to think about the answers to the history questions, but even more to learn to ask the questions for which history can provide no hard and fast answers, but through which, in the asking, we illuminate much about our own time. Both ways, there are lessons to be learned for us all.

I must admit that, after being out of my own classroom for a year, I have a few unexpected butterflies, but I'm weary of all the preliminaries.  I say bring it on.