School started up this week in Berkeley, but because of my sabbatical and waiting for my plane tickets from the state dept. for Cambodia, I’m not teaching. So instead I took a mid morning run and found myself on the UC Berkeley campus and saw this tree. It is the tree we used to sit under during breaks from my teaching credential program there back in 1979. I didn’t learn how to teach that year, and still am learning how, but I did make some lasting relationships. A bit of nostalgia as this is the first year since then, so that would make it 36 years, that I haven’t been in a classroom at this time of year. I don’t mind at all. But it seems like a long way from this tree to whatever tree I soon find myself under in Kampong Cham, in the shade along the Mekong River, escaping the heat of the jungle, waiting for my afternoon classes to begin. This tree is where my journey as an educator began in the late summer of 1979. Education has changed, but the tree hasn't. Although the green grass that had surrounded it is gone, torn out due to the ongoing drought in California.
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