Musings on an Autumn Day

Welcome to Fall! Or Autumn! Or Harvest! Or whatever we choose to call it.  With so many names, how could it not be your favorite time of the year?

My lovely wife, bless her heart, tells me that I am not the most positive person at times...I like to say I am "particular", but po-tay-toes/po-tah-toes.

Oddly enough, Autumn is the time of year to which I actually look forward and I thought I would share some of that joy.


Harvest

Robert Frost has always been one of my favorite poets (along with Whitman, Browning and William Carlos Williams).  He speaks to the seasons like no other writer:

GATHERING LEAVES

 

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

Every school year starts the same...we try to put together all the good ideas, memories, things that didn't work so well last year, new initiatives...all the "leaves"...into a our practices for this year.  This summer seemed particularly overwhelming.  Frost's poem really reflects the whimsical, unending, hysteria of organizing our professional lives as educators..."the mountains I raise/elude my embrace."

Every Leaf is Gold

Jim Bishop speaks to our "leaf piles" much better:

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.”  

Look back over your spring and summer in which I know all of you worked...at school, at home, at conferences and workshops...you have collected more gold, more value than you may yet realize.   These nuggets of wisdom, knowledge or skills pay dividends in the months to come.   

Now that we are one month in to the year, the kids have settled down and we are starting to "hunker" down to the long road ahead, please don't forget the importance of our fall harvest:

“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.”  

Finally, I think this piece of Autumnal wisdom might be the most important for working with kids in schools, sports or at home.