It was not easy walking past the upper school meeting where whoops and hollers signified that Mountain Day (a special day off from classes to visit Jiminy Peak for alpine sliding and other fun games) was well under way, and my step as I entered the Jesser building was perhaps not quite as light as it usually is. But the moment I set foot in the building, I could hear the hum of happy activity floating down the staircase (the 7th and 8th grade math and science classes), and as I walked up my mood progressively lightened with each step. Teaching should never be primarily about the teacher's mood, but if working with these kids should happen to cheer you up, is that so wrong?

Both my classes went well that morning. In "Exploring Language," the girls practiced for the quiz - which was on identifying cards (numbers 1-10, Jack-Queen-King, identifying suits) - by playing solitaire on our Smart Board. Each girl at the front of the room could make no decisions on her own, but had to be guided as to which card to play where by calling on her classmates for advice. We took the second part of class to begin our next unit, also designed by the students, restaurant vocabulary. In "Humanities," we signed up to take turns bringing in poetry to read to the class, discussed some of the finer aspects of grading policy as yet uncovered, and then took 45+ minutes for Writers Workshop. After pizza from Roberto's and dessert from The Cookie Factory (yum!), we piled in the white bus and headed off to Mount Sugarloaf to work on impressionistic drawing in the open air. As we rolled down route 91, my ears pounded to songs like "This love has taken its toll on me..." sung at the top of their lungs and nearly drowning out 93.1 FM, punctuated by honking horns from passing trucks responding to the appeals from the girls pumping their arms.

The alert bus driver might notice an inconspicuous sign posted high on a tree and somewhat away from the main entrance sign, "buses excluded." I, as it happened, did not see the sign, so when two friendly passers-by alerted me to the problem I was more than a little disconcerted. General high spirits were still prevailing in the bus behind me, but as I rolled slowly forward trying to work out a course of action, I heard one voice call out "Quiet, you guys, Bill needs to concentrate" and they obligingly took it down a notch. I decided to let the girls out and ask them to walk on up (we would be able to shuttle them down in Rebecca's car) so I could execute about a 22-point turn and drive back down. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, the bus and the mountain had a little disagreement at one point as to who would be occupying a certain point on the space-time continuum, and the mountain won, to the detriment of the rear bumper and a fender. I felt (and still feel) pretty awful about this, but when Rebecca (as requested by the girls) appeared to drive me back up to the top, and I saw them spread out on the grass or at the top of the observation tower, working on their sketches, once again my mood lightened.

Stopping at Sugarloaf Frostee for soft ice cream before returning to school was the perfect ending to the trip and to one of those days that illustrate wonderfully that, for SBMS to be a true learning community, everyone has to be open to what everyone else has to teach, and learning isn't just about academic knowledge.