1. Teach students full time at Burr and Burton Academy
2. Coach Varsity Baseball. It's a year round commitment. Clinics, lessons, open gym sessions, Summer camp, and fundraising.
3. Help some good friends take a Summer baseball team to Las Vegas for two weeks.
4. Complete a Masters Degree in one year. 30 credits, A to Z.
Good plan. Challenging plan. That's a lot of hours to mix in with family.
The volume of work needed to clean out a house from, well, water and all the damage it can do, stabilize it (as in muck it out), and then start rebuilding... should never be underestimated.
We had some tough family discussions about whether to put off grad school for another year while we recovered.
We decided to push through.
My family pitched in a ton. There were plenty of days when 'dad' wasn't available to travel to events, or to grind through some of the routine day-to-day house work.
I left this last Summer tired... but very fulfilled.
The year coming up has a very different pace.
In the Spring I'll be off on a sabbatical to seek out innovative education cooking around the world. Along the way I'll talk it over with some great people.
I'm looking forward to the adventure, and the travel.
With that sabbatical comes the decision to take a year off from coaching baseball. One full calendar year. It was not an easy decision. Baseball has been in my calendar every year since I was 4 years old.
I needed to take a year off from it though, and the intense time commitment therein to dedicate myself more thoroughly to this sabbatical exploration.
Fun challenges ahead.
My thanks to my family for making this happen, and for the celebration party. It was a celebration for everyone involved. Good food. Good company. Just the ticket.
Keep moving forward...