To avoid "burn out" from the general tensions of the times and from the severe demands of the teaching profession, English teachers need to exploit the means of renewal. Having literature at their command, English teachers can reconstruct themselves again and again through the dynamic interplay of human imagination and language artistically wrought. In addition to literature, teachers are blessed in having composition as a major component of the curriculum. Clearly the writing process is a ritual of renewal, of transmuting inchoate and often chaotic thoughts and feelings into an external order that simultaneously reorganizes the inner self. Too, the profession of teaching has built into it cycles of renewal, from planning periods to summer vacations. Beyond finding renewal within the school calendar, teachers can find renewal in the young people who enter the classroom, being renewed by their vitality and often by their idealism and innocence. Another means of renewal, one outside the classroom, is that furnished by colleagues at conferences. At conferences teachers can learn from and be reassured by others. Outside the pale of the profession, teachers must find their own idiosyncratic means of renewal--whether it be through jogging, buying a new outfit, or collecting antiques. By consciously seeking renewal, teachers can find some joy in the world, some hope for the future, and some reason for persevering. (HOD)