Often I am asked why I became a teacher.  When I am on interviews or having a casual conversation, people ask me about my career choice.  I give many reasons each time I answer that question.  One answer I give remains constant among the rest.

I love school.  

It is that simple.  I LOVE SCHOOL.  I love being in school.  I love thinking about school.  I love looking at all the neat books, posters, gadgets, and furniture in a classroom.  I love lectures, discussions, and seminars.  I love all that fine and noble learning that goes with school.  

There is not a subject in school that does not interest me.  If I had the time and money, I would get a degree in every academic subject.  Being among books and students elevates me.  Indeed, I have three degrees now.  That is not nearly enough.  Were I a thermometer, I would want more and more and more degrees.

I love the pep rallies, clubs, ball games, teacher collaboration, and meaningful professional development.  When the basketball coach at Tyner Academy in Chattanooga told me that he could not find enough teachers to sell tickets for the junior varsity games, I volunteered to work every game.  He was so grateful, but for me, it was what my grandmother would call a hoot and a holler. 

Educators and students are among the most interesting people I have ever known anywhere.  Just about everyone else becomes boring after an hour or so.

When I was in elementary school, I loved to hear Mr. Mayberry, the principal, tell Jack tales in the school auditorium.  He never told the same story twice.  When Mrs. Fowler read Where the Red Fern Grows, we begged her to read it to us again and again.

Junior High thrilled me.  Our football team went undefeated for the first time in school history.  The cafeteria staff served pizza for lunch, something I had never eaten before.  There were sock hops and science fairs.  I had seven different teachers each day. 

Mr. Clark, my eighth grade math teacher, was a preacher.  He stood tall and thin like Abraham Lincoln.  I placed fake vomit near his desk once and poured water over it so it would look real.  He seemed to know right away who did it.  He smiled all the way to the principal’s office with me in tow by the ear.

My senior year in high school was the best.  I was elected a Senior Superlative.   My classmates elected me as Most School Spirit.  I won the Lion’s Club scholarship.  It was obvious to everyone that I had more fun in high school, learned more in high school, than any other place in town. 

I played varsity football in high school.  I still dream of the wet grass sticking to my shins, gathering into green tufts among the laces on my cleats.  I hear pads popping, helmets hammering, gang tacklers grunting, and the band blasting our school fight song while cheerleaders are shouting, “Let’s go Lions!”

In dreams, I see Coach Weathers on the sidelines looking as imposing as Bear Bryant.  He barks plays into a running back’s ear.  Coach Cotter signals formations with deft hand movements.  Coach Bishop yells at a lineman who missed a block.  Coach Smith praises a running back who made a first down.  We had a great team that year and a lot of school pride.  I played on one of the best defenses in the state.  I believe we still have the record for the longest game and most overtimes in Hamilton County.

I still dream of my school.  Red Bank High School was an old red brick building with radiators that clanked and clunked in the winter.  The handles were hot and they hissed when Mrs. Wharton, my French teacher, or Mrs. Gault, my English teacher, turned them off because the room was too stuffy for breathing.  In late spring and early autumn, the air conditioners jutting out of the windows roared and rumbled so loudly the teachers unplugged them.  They pulled the lower windows open by their gray, metal handles, and they pushed the upper windows out with yardsticks. 

When I was in school, we did not suffer the torrid, insufferable heat wave of August.  School began in September, the Tuesday after Labor Day.  By the second week of school, all the windows were opened and those invigorating autumn breezes lifted stray sheets of notebook paper atop cream colored, laminated desktops. 

I played clarinet in my junior high band.   My love for classical music started in 7th grade.  In 9^th grade, I practiced over and over to play perfectly the plaintive adagio of Air for Strings in G by Bach.  Mr. Cassavant fussed when a note was tardy or early.  

Mr. Bell, my high school band director, taught us Sousa, Duke Ellington, and Chicago.  I learned to march, but never got to perform during football season.  However, I played alto clarinet in the All Region band.  I love just about every kind of music there is today because of band.  There is no greater learning than that.

My best friends were among the band members.  They were the coolest.  Although I was a jock, and some of my friends were jocks, the most laughter and fun I experienced came from the percussion, brass, and woodwind sections. 

So this blog is for school and everything there to be loved and summoned up forever in dreams.  This blog is for those who love learning, who learn until the day they die, and who transmit their love for learning to their own students.

You are my audience.  Peer, colleague, student, or former student:  we are on the same journey as seekers of discovery for the sake of being astonished.

Here’s hoping my blog helps us all continue to love learning while never leaving school.