It is an old adage: By failing to prepare, we prepare to fail.

In August and early September millions of children feel the anxiety of a new school year.  If you are a parent of one, you know their trembling right up to the front door of the school on the first day, where you anticipate the welcoming smile of a confident teacher, arms open wide to receive your child.  Really?  What about those teachers?

Although I have been retired from teaching high school for decades, the onset of September puts me in a Preparation Panic.  How to start the first week… Well, it will depend on the students… What classroom protocol sets the stage for playing out a well-ordered year.  You would think after a couple of decades opening a new school year, I would have the first day down pat.  However, one summer after twenty years teaching high school English, I hit a psychological roadblock.  No, it was more like a cavernous pit into which I was about to fall because I could not recall how the road led gracefully into a new year.  I could not outline the first day of class.   Probably depressive anxiety.  Nonetheless, I had no memory of how I had successfully started classes in the past.

I was lucky to have a continuing friendship with my favorite UW English professor well after I had graduated.  Whenever I struggled in my teaching, I could call Roger Sale.  He would suggest a coffee date or breakfast where his advice was as startling as anything on the menu, and somehow always profound.  For instance, having taught a certain novel on the prescribed curriculum year after year, I complained to him that there was absolutely nothing new to find in the book, no way to ignite in my students a love of literature.

“I never teach anything I don’t want to spend time with,” he said.  “I teach only books that intrigue me.” Hmm.  Could this year’s juniors traverse literary landscapes without having studied The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with me?   That was the year I checked in with the district administrator for approving texts, and asked to adopt Toni Morrison’s  Beloved, a book still fresh on the best seller list, a book I had read only once with some confusion about who was speaking and the relationship between scenes real and imagined.  I would be teaching a book for which I had more questions than answers.  What kind of teacher would risk that? How could I plan with so much unknown territory?  The unit was one of the most successful literary experiences I have taught.  When I asked the class a question, it was a real question for which I didn’t know the answer.  These weren’t those phony questions teachers ask until a student provides a preordained answer.  These were genuine inquiries with which I needed help.  The kids got it.  Together we opened Beloved like a treasure chest of discovery and reasoning. — what we call critical thinking.

As for Roger’s advice about my blanking on how to start the school year in September, he invited me to enroll in his summer class in teaching writing.  I had already taken it in past years from another professor, but I showed up those summer days, each week being more of a student than a teacher.  I became engaged in Roger’s writing assignments.  I saw through a student’s eyes, rather than through my foggy vision.  September arrived.  Day one: I successfully welcomed all one hundred students.  We wrote together. It would be a productive year.

            Planning ahead and anticipating the days ahead are traits distinctive to humans.  I looked it up: Do animals plan ahead?  After all, in recent weeks, a little Douglas Squirrel scurries to the railing of our treehouse where Allan places peanuts each morning.  The squirrel may eat the first one or two, but after that, it races across a thin limb of a maple and descends the trunk of an adjacent fir where there is a hole now filling with peanuts for winter. Google may not be the last word in science, but from what I found, I learned that animals don’t plan as we do.  That squirrel would stash those nuts before it had ever experienced the cold of winter. Scientific papers say the squirrel’s behavior is more “instinct than insight.”  Aren’t humans lucky to have both!

            The Bible abounds with stories of anxiety about what lies ahead, and the paralyzing attempts to prepare for the unknown.  Whether Israelites fleeing their enemies or followers of Christ fearing his persecution, the destination remained obscure. The apostle Paul travelled miles mentoring the early churches so they could receive the comfort of not going it alone.  Here we are community.  Here we seek out our mentors. A couple of weeks ago, I joined on to go to Mwanzo in Kenya at the end of September.  I confess here, that I am terrified of going far from home, especially without my husband.  Why did I decide to do this?  How can I prepare?  Today my arm tingles from travel immunizations.  At the drugstore I picked up pills to help me sleep and comfort indigestion.  I am planning ahead, but what really relieves my anxiety is the list of travelers, all familiar names from our congregation.  If I forget something, I know they will be there for me.  If I get lost, they will search for me.