After thinking hard about it, we have decided NOT to have in person retreats this fall.
We surveyed many school systems and came away with the following conclusion: In a normal school year, principals and systems don’t mind a teacher taking a professional development Wednesday and filling that teaching slot with a substitute. But the pandemic has caused a terrible substitute teacher shortage. A lot of principals and superintendents just want their teachers to stay in their classrooms right now — enough to jeopardize our chances of having a successful in-person fall retreat.
We had hoped to stage two events — one with a Civil War theme at Stone’s River National Battlefield in Rutherford County and one with an early Tennessee history theme at Sycamore Shoals State Park in Carter County. We are not canceling those events. We are simply postponing them. Venues willing, we will probably stage them in February 2022 as “winter retreats.”
Keep the faith, everyone!
“History” Bill Carey
