Is it the chalk dust or the permanent marker fumes that make teachers a bit "high" every fall?

A teacher hears her own shoes echoing in the empty hallways.  Her keys jingle as she opens the room she hasn't seen since school let out a couple of months ago.  Although she loved the silence of summer, she can already hear lockers slamming, girls giggling, the shriek of her own whistle at the end of recess.  The corners of her lips bend upward slightly, because she misses the happy noise of school.

In her room, she sees bare walls and dusty shelves.  She envisions cooperative learning groups, a line of students by the pencil sharpener, construction paper pieces being picked off the floor, and arms waving for her attention.  "Pick me!" they say.  She smiles as she puts the desks in their new spots. 

Then she smells the freshly opened Crayola box, the scent of pencil shavings next to new wide-lined paper, the morning coffee that always sits just three inches to the right of her computer screen.  She thinks back to the years when chalk dust also filled the air.  Aah!  The aroma of a new year with all its possibilities.

She looks at the plain, shiny white board, and lays out new blue, black, and red Expo markers.  She can taste the birthday treats students will bring her and remember the taste of cold coffee that she never gets to drink until after recess.  The teacher pulls her favorite mug from its spot in her drawer, shines it up, and puts it in its place.  "Are you ready?" she asks the mug, "ready for long days? Ready to give me enough energy to keep up with these kids?"

The teacher sits in her chair, turns on the computer and listens to it hum and click back to life.  She hears her colleagues ask how her summer went, students asking if they can go to the bathroom, parents complimenting her teaching style and asking how they can help out in class. The teacher laughs a bit at that last daydream, but keeps imagining it any way.  Why break the spell of a classroom before the first day of school?