When grading all the papers and exams, averaging grades, writing final comments, attending faculty meetings, tidying up the classroom, and bringing books home is finally done, then a teacher can smile and have a glass of wine on the porch and talk idly to those she has rather neglected during those last few harried weeks.

Yet even then, she has a to-do list already written of everything that needs to be taken care of during the days of summer when she can sit around the house waiting for hours for the workman who does not come in his stated window. I have collected a series of tasks to accomplish and they include:

• taking our 20-year-old walnut dining room table to be refinished at the wood shop that built it in Lancaster County
• having the plumber fix the faucet handle that won’t turn and the kitchen faucet that keeps tipping over when we are doing dishes
• collecting estimates to have the driveway re-blacktopped
• collecting estimates for the back patio to be redone
• taking my grandmother’s cedar chest to a repair shop so they can fix the veneer
• finding homes for an old air conditioner and desk

Some of these things are already checked off my list but others will stretch through the summer.

But the summer for teachers is also a time to rejuvenate and regain lost patience, idealism, and optimism. Sometimes teaching is just wearing. Some lessons go incredibly well. But a few do not and those I remember most of all. And in a similar way, I don’t remember those phenomenal papers written by my best students — although I certainly enjoy reading them when I am grading a stack of 30 papers. And here I am going to break my parallel grammatical structure: I remember those students who did not write strong papers because they did not have a focused thesis, or they lacked textual evidence, or they did not analyze for diction and symbolism and draw inferences. I remember grading those papers and feeling despondent for those students that I knew had worked hard and hoped to write their best paper and did not for a variety of different reasons. Those students and those papers are the ones that make me over the summer rethink or re-envision lessons, assignments, and assumptions.

So this summer I intend to get all those little tasks accomplished, read books that I want to read, do some creative writing, try listening to an audiobook while knitting on my latest project, and spend time with my family and dearest SH. And I will also do some work on my teaching practice.