Strange things happen at a school during the summer months. Teachers get hired and fired, or decide to retire, or move away. Floors get waxed, walls and handrails get painted, items get repaired or mysteriously broken. Whole classrooms full of furniture wander away and turn up in unlikely places. Bookshelves get rearranged. Supplies get ordered, delivered, and distributed, often to the wrong places. Students and teachers who cannot stay away roam the halls. New students are enrolled. Technology is upgraded. Major decisions are made.

In the midst of all this, I have to teach summer school to about twenty incoming freshmen. This is an English class designed to give a boost to students who didn't perform as well as our admissions office would have liked on the entrance exam. We spend most of our time on grammar, with a little discussion of reading techniques and study tips. It isn't anything drastic--just making the poor kids show up for fifteen hours in the middle of July is drastic enough.

But the chaos that surrounds such a simple class is remarkable. The students show up late and unprepared, and don't know where to go or what to do. Since there is little communication between groups of administrators, teachers, and support staff during the school year, let alone summer, no one knows anything about the class, not even me. I didn't get a roster. I showed up (early, thank goodness), to find that the classroom I've taught in for six years was utterly devoid of furniture. Partway through my copying of handouts for the students, someone (maintenance) came along and unplugged the copy machine, dragging it out of the faculty workroom and into the hallway. The second day of the class, today, I came in to find that someone (IT) had come in and taken the LCD projector I had been using off the rolling cart and mounted it to the ceiling. Great, except I can't find a remote for it so I have to stand on the furniture today to turn it off and on. Goodness knows if I will come in to find the furniture in this room gone as well.

Anyway, summer school is an adventure, and the only thing one can hope for, student or teacher, is survival. Four days left...