The Shift

I feel the shift of fall. My friend Carrie has offered me the word and says that she can smell the shift. I see it in the colour of fall. The way the sunlight bounces orange like over the dinner table and causes me to think that it is time to retire for the evening. It is the season of the year that I am compelled to buy bouquets of yellow HB pencils for friends. It is also that time when I find myself fortunate to be able to walk through institutional steel doorways, effortlessly, like I have been doing it all of my life. I almost have.

I started school forty-two years ago and there has been only one year that I haven’t started school, either as a student or a teacher. That was my first year out of high school. I was working for a hotel and when I rode the student packed city bus to work that morning, I yearned to be one of those backpack-clad bodies with new clothes and a fresh new outlook.

School is not just a place but plays one of the most important roles in our lives. As teachers we must honour this so that our students will as well.

Enjoy and envelop the shift...

…Ellyn