The only roles I’ve played for thirty years are son, husband, and father. The first was by great good fortune, the second two by wonderful choice. My career path, on the other hand, has been circuitous with no single sustained stops. Though always related to education, the specific roles have wandered in and out of local, regional and national settings. So as I currently find myself invested in the Stern Center for Language and Learning where we are celebrating our 30th Anniversary of helping all learners reach their full potential, I’m struck by Blanche Podhajski’s vision, tenacity, and grit. Or maybe that’s not quite the right list. I wonder about parallels to my three 30-year roles and Blanche’s 30 years at the helm of the Stern Center. What does it take for such things to “take?” I risk those who will suggest I’m teetering on the cloying, but I think it is about the heart of it. Love is perhaps not often considered in the leadership manuals, but passion certainly is. “Follow your bliss” and all that. However, we know from studies that passion is simply not enduring, rekindlable perhaps, but not sustainable. Love on the other hand is deeper, richer, able to endure occasional hardships without sacrificing its essence. Love lasts when we realize what it takes and are willing to nurture and invest accordingly. That’s how I can claim my decades of son, husband, and father. And that’s how Blanche can claim her thirty years as founder and president of the Stern Center; she loves her life’s work. Happy Anniversary, Blanche!

Sunday morning a guest minister opened his sermon with references to the beginning of a new school year and all that means to children and youth, to teachers and principals, to parents. He elicited knowing giggles and groans from throughout the church as students and parents (and grandparents no doubt) projected themselves into the rhythms of school bus rides, homework, recess, tests, and friendships. Despite recent experiments with school calendars most of us in this country and for the most part globally still feel those traditional patterns of school/no school/school. For me, now eight years out from having worked to ensure that facilities and faculties were fully ready for the opening bell, I still hear and feel the comfortable buzz of a new year in late August. Two experiences suggest in part why those rituals still cling to my sense of time. One is a blessing, and one a tragedy, though both are each. Recently, while checking out of a local hardware store, the clerk greeted me by name. We chatted; he asked how long I’d lived in the area; back and forth for a few minutes as he recorded our transaction. Clearly he knew me, but the best I could do was allow him to think I recognized him since one part of my brain was engaged (and he wore a first-name nametag, “Chris”) while another was in search mode. He talked about when I was his principal, how much had changed in those 30+ years, his family, and his job. I was uplifted by his strong, positive recollections from his childhood, thanked him for recognizing me and speaking up, and left the store. Hours later I finally got it; he’d been in second grade at the first school where I was principal. A great little kid, full of curiosity, possessing a blend of innocence and experience not uncommon in very rural Vermont. During his second grade year his mother and a sibling were killed in a car accident; life as he’d known it was shredded, and eventually the remaining family moved away. Today, he is married and providing for a family of his own. When we reconnected at the hardware counter after three decades, we didn’t talk about tragedy, we talked instead about blessings common to us; homes, jobs, family. Recently, my younger daughter’s first grade teacher died after an arduous battle with multiple cancers. Sue was Lindsay’s teacher more than twenty years ago, and we still remember her fondly as just the sort of person parents want as the teacher for their six-year-old. She was energetically there for the kids, a loving advocate, effective teacher, and nearly perfect in loco parentis. We’d hear from Sue when we’d see each other at the market; she’d have a smile and story ready at the breakfast cafe on Saturday mornings; and in the ensuing years she always asked about Lindsay’s life. That was it, actually, Sue was the sort of teacher who became part of the children’s lives. Sue retired a decade ago and fully enjoyed what that allowed her until stricken with voracious cancer, a tragedy preventing her full celebration and reward. However, when we speak today of Sue we don’t hover over tragedy; we talk more about the blessings common to us; shared careers, family, children. The cycle of a new school year conjures the scent of unbroken Crayolas, the shiver of frost in the morning, and the chorus of animated voices in the hallways. It also speaks to the lives such as Chris, Sue, and me touched and blended forever. It is a familiar, enriching rhythm.

“But Ed, nothing’s perfect in life.” Matthew’s response when I was fretting that we’d glued one leg shorter than the other three on a wooden wolf we’d added to our growing pack. Matthew’s ten; we’re reading buddies at the Boys and Girls Club. We meet for an hour each Thursday and spend about 40 minutes reading and 20 minutes doing something else. A couple of months ago he discovered that I do small wood projects and asked about our making “a bunch of animals, like wolves and bears and deer.” So we negotiated that into our reading incentive contract, and we’re now up to four wolves, one bear and one deer all of which I bring in parts ready to sand, glue, and paint. Along the way Matthew’s reading is improving, our menagerie is growing, we know each other better, and his world view continues to impress as wise beyond his years. I know it sounds like a cliché when it comes to mentoring, but I often leave our times together wondering which one of us gets more out of it. Nothing’s perfect, but our Thursday’s are pretty good.

Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break EdX, a nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will release automated software that uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers. By JOHN MARKOFF, Published: April 4, 2013, NYT OK, so some of my fondest memories of my early career are reading and responding to high school student’s essays. As a young English teacher in rural Vermont I was idealistic, eager to truly know the students, and optimistic that I could help develop solid thinkers, thoughtful debaters, and passionate poets all through writing and our conversations about it. Maybe that’s why I cringed at this new software application and its claims. Granted, my efforts at reflection, compassion, and constructive even friendly feedback would often take me as many as two days to provide a class of twenty-two 17 year olds, so the software is much faster. But still; it’s called humanities for a reason, right? More than a few of those young writers from the ‘70’s remain locked in my memory of what it meant for me to “teach,” and it was about connecting with lives, understanding their dreams and challenges, being part of showing them how language matters, how writing is thinking twice, and how the ways we communicate change lives, our own and others. Can software do that?

In our cellar storage area we have kept a cradle made by my fishing buddy before our first child arrived, the disassembled crib that our girls both used decades ago, and boxes of children’s books…all of this waiting for the day when grandchildren would bless us. In the past four months we’ve moved the cradle to one of the guest rooms, the books to the main floor, and realized that the cradle might need some work! Avery is four months old and already loves books as a primary attraction. Granted some of that is because the heavy board pages taste so good, but also she loves the visuals, the cadence of our reading to her, and her own recognition that she can turn the pages whenever she wishes regardless of the narrative flow. We’re fortunate that we can visit on alternate weekends, and each such celebration inevitably includes at least one story. Perhaps just another excuse to cuddle, but isn’t that part of how we pass on the love…of books…of each other?

I’m not often one short of language, but I’ve neglected this blog for months waiting for the right, best words to express my wonder at what a grandchild brings. Still no best words, odd for one others might even call glib. Nevertheless, and, with apologies for my narrative inadequacies in this case, it’s time to try. Avery Anne was born on Veterans’ Day just over three months ago, and I’ve been totally smitten since. Lindsay, my daughter, has been transformed into “Avery’s mother.” Joe, my son-in-law, has been demoted as he put it this weekend to “Avery’s transportation manager.” It’s not that we love Lindsay and Joe any less, it’s simply that we’ve discovered a love so new, so compelling, so full of unlimited promise and unfettered joy, that all else steps back to allow this glow. So now, we have a cradle in one of the guest bedrooms, a growing array of toys, and a soon to be overflowing basket of Good Night, Moon and its family of children’s books. I’m called back to when the cradle was for Marissa and Lindsay, when we built towers of blocks, and when we snuggled with them to read and “find the mouse” on each page. And I’m drawn forward to when Avery will read the books to us, work with me to build the puzzles, and bait her own hook!