Two teachers were talking. One asked the other, “What do you think are the three best things about teaching?”

“Oh that's easy,” was the reply, “June, July and August!”

August is about over. School is about to begin again. Teachers across the land are psyching themselves up to head back into the blackboard jungle.

This is an especially tough transition if the teacher is coming off a good vacation. As the new saying goes, “The bigger the Summer, the harder the Fall.”

Teachers catch it from all sides.

“While students may be troubled with the three R's – Readin', 'Riting, and “Rithmetic,” says James Dent, “teachers have the problem of the three P's – Parents, Pay, and Parking Places!”

If that's not bad enough, teachers often deal with, on the one hand, administrators whose law of academic administration seems to be, “Remember that not all the faculty have all their faculties.”

And on the other hand, with students who Curt Brandao says have the nonchalant idea that, “If God had meant us to get straight A's, he wouldn't have given us 25 other letters to work with.”

It's no wonder that teachers get depressed sometime. That they agree with the observation “You don't have to be a cannibal to get fed up with people.”

Teachers sometimes get the feeling that Murphy's Law rules their lives. You know Murphy's Law, “If anything can go wrong – it will!”

Well, I'd like to remind teachers that Murphy's Law can apply to itself. If anything can go wrong with Murphy's Law – it will!”

I prefer to believe in Baughman's Law, “If anything can go right – it might!”

BITS and PIECES magazine tells a story which illustrates this law.

A little over fifty years ago a Johns Hopkins University professor gave a group of graduate students this assignment: Go to the slums. Take 200 boys, between the ages of 12 and 16, and investigate their background and environment. Then predict their chances for the future.

The students, after consulting social statistics, talking to the boys, and compiling much data, concluded that 90 percent of the boys would spend some time in jail.

Twenty-five years later another group of graduate students was given the job of testing the prediction. They went back to the slum area. Some of the boys – now men – were still there, a few had died, some had moved away, but they got in touch with 180 of the original 200. They found that only four of the group had ever been sent to jail.

Why was it that these men, who had lived in a breeding place of crime, had such a surprisingly good record?

The researchers were continually told: “Well, there was this teacher...”

They pressed further and found that in 75 percent of the cases it was the same teacher, a woman. The researchers went to this teacher, now living in a home for retired teachers. How had she exerted this remarkable influence over a group of slum children? Could she give them any reason why these boys should have remembered her?

“No,” she said, “no, I really couldn't.” And then thinking back over the years, she said musingly, more to herself than to her questioners: “I loved those boys...”

“If anything can go right – it might!”

Baughman's Law is something teachers might do well to remember – especially in September!