summer's close

Summer is drawing to a close, thank Jeebus. Me, I look forward to fall, but don't expect I'll experience truly cool fall weather until October: September often feels like summer's last-ditch attempt to make me sweat.

My YB students are unhappy, as you can imagine: school starts up again soon. My own schedule will be reverting to the original 3:30PM to 9:30PM (we come in a few minutes early for planning), which means I'll be losing two hours' work every day, for a total loss of eight hours per week. Saturday work was offered to me, but only four hours' worth. That's not enough work to be worth the gas I'll be using.

Some of the kids I haven't seen all summer will be back with us; I'm eager to see most of them, although there are one or two whom I wouldn't mind not seeing. YB's kids are mostly gifted and motivated, but we've also got some children who are, to put it bluntly, ungifted and unmotivated. They just happen to have parents with enough disposable income to send them to a tutoring center.

YB seems to have gained a few students over the course of the summer, which is a good thing for the center. We survive on enrollment and re-enrollment since we operate separately from any established county school system. The fact that students keep enrolling with us is a good thing: we all get to stay employed, and we're all more likely to enjoy full schedules (as opposed to the partial days that plagued me from March until last month).

More than anything, though, I look forward to a change in the weather. The recent cooling is, I hope, a sign of things to come, but I won't be truly happy until we've got temps back in the 50s and 60s. (Fahrenheit, I mean.)


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