I enjoy your emails, not that they have been funny or up-beat all the time, but you write about you and your surroundings in your own inimitable fashion. Having known you for over 40 years: each email, to me, seems like a little personal character snapshot. I like that. I have also noticed a general improvement in structure, grammar, spelling, word usage, etc. in your emails over the course of your teaching season. Are you editing and re-reading more or is the discipline and practice of writing a weekly newsletter and having the time to read "literature" improving your skills? I suspect it is probably a combination of both.

If your emails didn't do anything "for me" I wouldn't have posted them. Though they be pretty low, I do have some standards, you know. I encourage you to continue writing those emails -- it doesn't have to be weekly, though as you note in your email, there's a kind of discipline involved. Even and especially in the Arts discipline is required.

I believe you are trying too hard to be "the best" teacher. Julie and others could tell you that problem kids come in all shapes and sizes and income brackets. And teaching at a private schools you get much more parental involvement, a double-edged sword where the line between involvement and interference is very blurry indeed. I have talked to teachers in our choir who have suffered nervous breakdowns due to the (mostly) psychological harassment of a department head or principal. Instead of being the best just do your best, a subtle difference perhaps. However, it allows you to embrace and do your best at other activities in your life as well as the one that "pays the bills". This email is starting to ramble on, characteristic of an open loop system. When you are not talking directly to the person you are addressing, one tends to pile on the advice.

To summarize, keep in touch. It shrinks the distance between us. After all, we spent almost 20 years in spitting distance of each other sharing the room.