Which One Are You?

With exactly three weeks to go before our first day of school, I thought this piece hit home.  We are constantly talking about doing this for this kids.  That it isn't about what we are getting paid and the hours that we actually spend preparing for our students to arrive that first day and for all of the days that follow.  But how many of us truly mean it?  How many of us truly dread the fact that the calendar has turned to August and we will be back at work before the calendar page turns again?  Shouldn't we be excited about what we do?  Shouldn't we look forward to the fact that whatever happened last year is in the past and that we now have a chance to start over again?  We can learn from the things that perhaps didn't go as we had planned them in the bright sun-shiny days of July and August and figure out how to make them better.  We can take the successes that we had in the previous school year (and there were far more of them then we probably care to admit to ourselves) and figure out a way to use them again and maybe even make those better.  If we truly mean what we say, that it is about the kids, then we can call ourselves teachers.