STAPLES

I don't often look back at high school teaching. Oh, sometimes. The old buds I taught with. The extra curricular activities I sponsored or worked. And, yes, some students.

But just today as the calendar turned away an all too quick April this year, I commented that I loved to teach school in the Spring.

Mainly because of improved weather and Summer on the way, but those were not the only reasons.

I taught seniors for so long that I identified with that class more than any other. They were on the threshold, their term papers were finished, many were exempt from semester exams. While they may have had senioritis, so did I.

I got to enjoy their lasts moments of high school life. Their plans for their individual futures and college life awaiting. The eyes that held a look just a little longer on the faces of friends and even teachers.

And I got to teach them Thornton Wilder's Our Town. It seemed fitting. For many would be leaving their town. Lots vowing never to return. At least to live there. Their town was to them a nice town on the way to a better town. Most didn't particularly care for the play. At the time. But like their old teacher, I think many learned later the lessons of the great American play.

If they didn't, I also taught the great modern American play, Death of a Salesman. I like to think their appreciation for Miller's drama was enhanced by their own growing older themselves.

At the other end of high school life, those on the brink of being mature were my Honors English I students, anticipating their last Summer without driving privileges, For them, A Tale of Two Cities. The French Revolution, Madam LaFarge and Corday, and the greatest sacrificial character in fiction, Charles Darney's savior, Sydney Carton.

Yessir, I miss it a little today. I'm reminded of some students who loved one or the other at the time, and as they said in the last episode of Wonder Years, "and [I] look back and wonder".