-Isms: Views on life in rural America

This is a love story, of sorts; a stream-of-consciousness gathering of thoughts and concerns, a song of praise for unsung heroes whose daily routines have been upended.

Teaching isn’t an easy career to begin with. Sure, there are those people who think it’s an 8-to-4 job, with summer’s free and two weeks of Christmas vacation.

What they don’t realize is, after staying in your classroom until 5 p.m., every day, you take work home - papers to grade, lessons to fine-tune, phone calls to parents - the list continues. They forget that you take tickets at ball games and sponsor four extra-curricular...