I stole the title to this blog post from my high school English teacher who is now the Director of the Maine Writing Project (www.mainewritingproject.blogspot.com). Bare with me as I tie in what one has to do with the other.
I went to Mountain Valley High School in Rumford, Maine and while I was there, Richard Kent was my English teacher. Each quarter, my mother would allow for me to have one “mental health day” which I could spend at home, out of school. The timing of these days worked out well in that I usually had to dedicate their entirety to producing the portfolio required for Mr. Kent’s class. What is a portfolio? Well, it is a serious writing project and requires hours and hours of thoughtful writing and reading, which I of course waited until the last minute to do. Thus, my mental health days felt more like writing exams than a leisurely afternoon at home (as intended).
Fast forward thirteen years and here I am writing for Sunday River’s History Blog. My mental health days have turned into mental health ski breaks and aren’t so much quarterly as they are frequent. However, there are definitely days when I never leave my computer because the amount of writing required piles up quicker than I can type. These are the days when I think back to the portfolio. The irony in all of this? Mr. Kent used to have my job as the Director of Communications for Sunday River in the eighties. In fact, Mr. Kent was part of the team known for dumping a truckload of snow on the Boston Common to show the Massachusetts market that there was in fact snow in the mountains of Maine – a public relations move that almost landed then general manager Les Otten in jail, but got a ton of great media attention nonetheless!
Today, Mr. Kent continues to lead the charge in improving student achievement by improving the teaching of writing and learning in the state’s schools. We are Facebook friends, so I have the pleasure of keeping up with him though status updates and the occasional email and phone call. It’s been a long time, but the funny thing is that we’re both still writing.
A recap of that day on the Boston Common can be read in Sunday River’s new book “Sunday River: Honoring the Past, Embracing the Future.” And since I enjoy tweaking titles to fit my own writing, I guess a fitting close to this blog post would be that if my future is anything like Mr. Kent’s, I will have a lot to embrace. Thanks for paving the way and for being a part of Sunday River’s history!