Room 312

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught. ~Oscar Wilde    It is evening and I sit here, alone, in my classroom.  It is mine, only mine, at this moment.  There are no children to grace these chairs, no laughter to fill this room.  There are no first graders here who love their teacher and are loved in return.  If I am quiet, very quiet, I can hear the echos of conversations now silent...voices once eager to read to me and to share the connections between personal experiences and beloved texts; to solve problems and take risks and to investigate their world with me; to write with creativity and expression, with all of the tools of the author's craft within their hearts and hands... (In this room there is never any doubt.  We are authors.)  Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.  ~Abbé Dimnet

Within these walls we read and write, engage in inquiry and exploration, but perhaps most importantly ~ we think, we feel and we live, laugh, learn and love.  I suppose that is what I miss the most tonight.  I miss the 'we'.  I am a very selfish girl.  More than anything, I am longing for what my students bring to me.  I teach them nothing.  They teach me everything.  Everything.


“Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life.” ~Henry L. Doherty

Let the school year begin.  Again.