In a few weeks, those roadside enterprises that have flourished all summer will shut down, and the young lemonade sellers will count their money, take down their lemonade stand, and go inside until next year.

Some will donate their profits to a local charity, and some will donate their profits to their own piggy bank.

And pretty soon, the splashes will cease and the neighborhood pools will be winterized and covered; the gates locked.

There. Swim season is over, even if it’s still blazing hot and even if the calendar says it’s August.

That’s because there’s another calendar that pushes its way in like an early cold front: the school calendar.

Where I live, school starts Aug. 4, and teachers start the day before.

But most teachers never stopped. They’ve been to workshops, conferences, and informal meetups with other teachers all summer, hoping to get and give advice about how to do the best job they can with the students they’re given.

In the Huntsville School district, there are 37 schools and 24,000 students with a wide range of backgrounds and abilities.

Imagine the possibilities and the complications.

It’s been many decades since I taught in a classroom, but I remember that students, even though they are all assigned to a certain school based on neighborhood or on family preference, aren’t all the same. There is no one cookie cutter child.

But teachers are expected to instruct all of them and to shape them into walking and talking encyclopedia pages, knowing the difference between George Washington and George Bush; between trapezoid and triangle; between capitalism and Communism.

And, if there’s time for the most important lessons, teachers can instruct them in the basics of decency:

• Don’t lie.
• Don’t hit others.
• Don’t shove people.
• Don’t make fun of people or call them names, even if you see politicians on television doing this during the news hour. 

And any teacher will tell you that the students who get off the bus or out of the car may come from very different homes.

One falls asleep during math because her parents were arguing loudly the night before, and she was awake until the wee hours.

One is hyperactive and bounces around the classroom like a basketball being dribbled by the Harlem Globetrotters.

Another is so bored because she’s so smart, and could do well two grades ahead of her peers. She deals with her boredom by passing notes and whispering to others.

Then there is the classic bully. Wherever he learned that might makes right doesn’t fly in the classroom where shoving your way to the front of the line means you move to the back of the line each time.

And then there are the ordinary students in the middle, with ordinary parents who enforce homework time and school rules and show up for parent-teacher conferences every semester. They steal a few hours from their jobs to volunteer on kite day and help with the Halloween carnival. Teachers know they can count on them.

And while there are indifferent teachers who count the years to retirement, there are also those who know it’s their calling.

I met one such teacher last weekend. She admits that teaching grade school is not glamorous and won’t make her rich, but it’s what she was meant to do, she says.

She shows me a coffee cup she plans to put in her classroom so she can gulp a jolt of caffeine before school starts. The slogan on the cup reads: I became a teacher for the money and the fame. Maybe she’ll get the tee shirt, too.

Contact Beth Thames at [email protected]