It’s the classic first-day-of-school writing assignment in English class: “how I spent my summer vacation.” There are films with this title: an adventure from 1967 starring Robert Wagner and Jill St. John; and another from 2025, a drama about a 13-year-old girl who spends the summer with her gravely ill grandfather. There is also a great children’s book with this title, in which a boy named Wallace Bleff recounts a fictional summer adventure in which he is carried off by cowboys to learn the ways of the Old West, and saves his aunt’s house from a stampede!

Q: What are the three best things about being a teacher?