It's Friday of Labor Day weekend, 2014. Unlike many (most?) places in the country, NY and NJ schools don't open until after Labor Day. So I'm basically coming to the end of a gracefully extended period of respite. Now rather than walking into the whole briar patch of whether teachers really need their summers off, let me simply say that I'm most grateful for the time to escape the bell schedule for a while. In my case, since I taught just about all of July--I have not had to work, aside from private tutoring jobs four or five times a week, for the month of August.

But that wonderful stretch is now closing.

And I'm left to ask, what am I going to teach?

Of the many ways I could answer that, and I will be taking as many of those ways as I can, I'm going to begin beyond the obvious, beyond the level of lesson plans and unit plans, beyond even the secular scripture known as the Common Core.

I'm going to teach them what I know about life.

Lesson one: how to say hello.