[That is an image from the unparalleledly wonderful movie Grease 2, featuring the song “Back to School.”  In case you didn’t know.]

For the first time in several years, I had my own back-to-school on the day itself!.  I taught middle-school English and drama for quite a chunk of years, but for the last few, have worked as a teaching artist through Actors Theatre of Louisville, visiting classrooms to teach playwriting.  This year, I’m doing a more formal partnership with a high school in town, so I got to attend the first day of school yesterday, and it actually put me in the mind of some fictional kids about to start the school year–Sachi and Marina, the girls of Nice and Mean.

I haven’t written about them in a while, I know; frankly, since I took a little appearances hiatus in the middle of the summer, I haven’t thought about them much, either.  But yesterday, seeing the neighborhood girls head back to school with little dresses and blown-out hair, I thought about what Marina and Sachi’s first day of school would have been like.  Nice and Mean begins a few week after school has started, but Sachi knew as early as the summer that her goal was to get into video elective, where her video would allow her to show people that she was more than just the stereotypical Indian honor-roll student.  Marina wouldn’t yet have been pissed off at her best friend to want to seek revenge, but I could certainly see her wanting to put together le perfect outfit.

I also thought about my own first days.  Like 11th grade, my second year at that school, when I came back from the summer relieved to find that the friends I’d made during the second half of the year were actually friends for real–and one of them had also crushed on a long-haired guitar-playing Brown University student who’d studied in Ecuador!  (She is still my best friend, and we still share a startling number of things in common.)  Or 8th grade, when I was determined to wear a flowered, Indian-print t-shirt on the first day, even though our school technically had a collared-shirt dress code.

(What the heck–why did it take so many scroll-downs to find the correct image for ‘granola shirt’?  Do you mean to tell me people aren’t using the same nomenclature from the late ’80s?)

It all led to me to a new poll (and frankly, I should have retired the old one a month ago; sorry)–what’s do you consider the best  thing about going back to school?

[Arg, I couldn’t get the poll to embed, so just look over to the left there–you should see the poll.]

You can vote for more than one thing and add your own answers. I look forward to seeing the results!

[Comment on this post and I will donate $1 to my local library!]

Sorry to be MIA, faithful readers!  First of all, I am pleased to report that about 35 people entered the Nice and Mean swag giveaway, and we have winners!  Congratulations to

Lisa from North Carolina, who won the grand prize!

And to runner-ups, Liz from Florida and Vidisha from Georgia!  (I don’t really know what the privacy rules are around sharing peoples’ information, so I’m hoping that this is both sufficiently personal that, if the winners are reading this, they can say to their friends, “She’s talking about me!” and that nobody will be like, “Liz from Florida!  She’s in my English class, and she should totally be writing her paper instead of entering contests!”  Sorry, Liz from Fl, if you actually teach English instead of take it, or if you hate English and don’t want to be mentioned in the same sentence with it.  If it’s any consolation, even though I’m a teacher, I regularly get asked on airplanes, “Are you in school?”  This may be a combination of the fact that I don’t usually wear make-up on airplanes and I’m usually clutching the armrest whimpering, “I don’t want to die” during the slightest hint of turbulence, but I digress.  Congratulations, Lisa, Liz, and Vidisha.)

One of the reasons I’ve been a bit MIA is that I’ve just started what I’m calling EMP–Early Morning Playwriting.  One of my excellent freelance-ish jobs is teaching playwriting in local schools, and I just started a new one last week.

It’s too bad that I can’t share too many specifics, because there are always interesting stories to tell, and I’m especially enjoying this class, despite the fact that we meet at 7:40 am! 

In my full-time teaching days, I used to have to report for homeroom at 8, but I didn’t have to be fully alert or engage the students much beyond, “See any good movies this weekend?” and “Does anybody want to play Blokus with me?”, so the current situation is a bit new.  Happily, these students get an A+ from me in being alert and engaged.  They have fun ideas and made me laugh today when acting out a play I’d brought in about a wizard demanding his tax return.  There was yelling and attitude and flailing around on the floor, all of which I very much appreciate–at least, when there’s acting involved.  Come to think of it, all three of those things make more than an occasional appearance in some other teaching gigs, but that’s all I’ll say about that. 

The only bad thing about EMP is that when I get home around 9am, I’m oddly of bleary and it’s all I can do to get myself to write, so that’s meant less time on the blog.  But I hope to reappear, especially because I’m going to be drumming up enthusiasm for the April Fool’s Nice and Mean ARC [Advanced Copy] Giveaway!  And I’m still participating in the Library-Loving Blog Challenge.  So do come back, and I will, too. 

Now I’ve got to re-load the caffeine.  I’ve got to plan some lessons for the afternoon that involve minimal floor-rolling.