"From the Desk of a 13th Year Newbie" is my favorite October JBS Mercantile layout. This is my thirteenth year of teaching, but it is also my first year at a new school. That transition has been challenging and gratifying, affirming my belief that teaching is a vocation, a calling. It is difficult and wonderful and important work, but because it can be so personally demanding, a teacher must constantly make a choice to answer that call. On a constant basis -- each year, each quarter, each week, each day, each period -- I say "yes" to teaching.
One of my favorite photos right now is a shot I took of my daughter at Bellows this summer. It was early in the morning, and the whole family had gathered on the windward side of the island for breakfast on the beach. Every time I look at this photo I marvel over the blue of the ocean, the wide expanse of sky, and this child, opening her arms to take in the wonder of it all. It's an endless ocean before her, but she moves toward it. It reminds me of e.e. cummings: "It's always ourselves we find in the sea."