The end of summer carries many clichés, many poignant memories of releasing our grips on long days, balmy nights, volleyball on the beach, smore’s at camp, shorts and flip-flops. State fairs. Leaves beginning to change. And school busses slowing our morning commutes. It’s that last one that still tugs at my heart the most. Having spent 24 years working in public schools, 19 as a principal, at this time of the year I feel like the geese being pulled toward a familiar, powerful destination. As I drove to work Monday (now at the Stern Center for Language and Learning, still education though not in the schools), I passed clusters of kids waiting for busses. Kindergarteners in crisp new clothes, clutching primary colored backpacks with one hand and a parent with the other. Teens slouching in T-shirts and boarder’s shorts, ear buds linked to i-Touch. Still, four years removed from the school scene, my heart bends just a bit, like a dowser’s rod, toward those kids, those schools, those days.