I am so tired. This is the fifth week of school, and I don't know if I have the stamina to last until June.

I have it pretty easy, too, at this small private high school. Five classes, yes, but two of those classes have only seven students.

And yet, I am new to this business of teaching. I am already 47 years old, and this is my second year. I have to re-read all the classics that I didn't read all that carefully when I was in high school back in the horrible '70s. And now of course I love the books and see all manner of wonderfulness that was invisible to me at age 16 and 17.

Nice moment with the juniors and seniors today. We're reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and are at the part where the Chief and McMurphy are talking for the first time, late at night, and the Chief is spilling his guts to Mac as much as he can, telling him he's small, and Mac says he'll put him on a training program that will make him big and wonderful and all the women will beat him to the floor for sex. At the end of his pitch Mac reaches over to pull the Chief's bed sheet off him and discovers the Chief has grown half a foot in just the last few minutes. My kids had read that to mean that the Chief had grown in height and couldn't figure out how Mac did it. I didn't have to say anything until one of them went, "Oh! I get it!" and it was a beautiful little English class moment.