So far, so good with this Covid/flu cocktail--just the usual punched-arm sensation with no other symptoms. The beautiful thing is: if this changes and I start feeling terrible, why, I can just lie down on the couch and nothing in the universe will be vexed with me. I am caught up with editing, I have plenty of time to prep for next week, and no one expects me to show up anywhere.

That said, I hope to be exercising and editing and running errands. I did some leaf raking and mulching yesterday afternoon, and today I'd like to settle the bed-sheet issue, start some housework, make the vegetable stock for next week's recipes. But we'll see what the vaccines say.

It was good to get out to write last night, and then, when I got home, I read an email from a student--my shyest, most withdrawn participant; an international student who has missed several classes because they had gone back home for weeks; a student who has never shared their own work in class: this person sent me an email asking if they could send me some of their writing to read. Just ask Tom if I was or was not crowing excitedly in the kitchen.

I see these kids for one full day every other week, late September through April, with larger gaps around vacation breaks. The kids don't really spend all that much time with me, so building trust is a challenge. The big plus is that they we're together for full-day stretches, and the work we do--reading, talking, writing--is emotional and intimate. Some kids respond quickly and overtly, while others are harder to gauge. All of them, however, do the work I ask: they all write hard; I can see that. And in every class I include some kind of paired project, so that two kids are talking together alone and figuring something out. My hope is that this less nerve-racking connection will help the shyer kids get more comfortable with the larger group. Receiving that email last night made me feel as if I were doing something right.

Last night's salon group was small--just four of us gathered--but every one of us happened to be a teacher. We all teach in different milieux: one is a full-time high school English teacher, one is a renowned MFA teacher, one is a visiting improv-theater artist in K-12 schools, and then there's me: a teacher of teachers, the director of what is essentially a teaching laboratory project for high school writers. As we were talking together about our own writing prompts, I could feel how skilled these other poets were at their jobs--at cogitating how and when and why to shift the reading of words into the writing of words. It was exciting. Good teaching is a deeply creative act.