THE FOURTH, OR HALFWAY FROM PARADISE

When I taught students, rather than teaching school, I mean that's like saying the preacher preaches church, July 4 was a benchmark. It marked the downside to Summer.

From then on out, Summer flew and school began again. Of course, that was in the olden times when students only went to school 9 months and never in the revered Summer unless they needed to make up credits. The only time I went to Summer school was to take Driver's Training because of my late in the year birthday. Most of my classmates had been driving since they were second semester sophs, but not me. So I had to take Behind-the Wheel in the Summer.

But when I sat on the other side of the desk, I valued Summer even more. Well, for 20 years I taught Summer school for 8 weeks for both semesters. Sometimes they overlapped with additional education courses I was taking, too, but none of that ever got too much in the way of Summer. That's what I lived for.

And then Those In The Know decided that year-round school would panaceacally solve student low achievement. They forgot what they had learned over the Summer. So let's stagger the school year and give them two week breaks and five or six weeks only for Summer.

That's not enough time. To get fat with Summer. To run through fields of green as the song goes. To, yes, forget about school. To socialize. To go to camps. To go camping. To listen to a ballgame late into the night, or better yet to go an out of town ballgame and get home at 2:00 AM.

Yet as much fun as July 4 activities were, I knew that before I knew it, stores would be advertising Back to School sales, and before long I would have to make that dreaded walk back up the stairs to my classroom. The first bell would be a death toll to Summer.