Being the baseball fanatic I am, I usually equate the beginning of each school year with the beginning of each baseball season. Just as pitchers and catchers report early to spring training, teachers and administrators are the first to arrive on campus.
After some down time, members of both professions return to their place of work, greeting colleagues and teammates with a smile, a hug, and a story about how they passed the time since they last saw one another.
In baseball, new strategies are devised for a new set of players and in teaching, new lesson plans are created for a fresh class of students. There are drills and skills which are the same from year to year, which a person has gone through so many times they could do it with their eyes closed. For pitchers, it’s covering first base on a ball hit to the right side. For educators it’s the curriculum which they’ve learned to perfect so well.
