The Ending

Two more days.

There are only two more days with children, and then the school where I have taught for the last four years will close its doors forever. The last eighth grade class will graduate Monday night, and all the others will be gone on Tuesday afternoon. And... if you walked through our hallways, and you didn't know that -- you most likely would not be able to tell that this was our reality. The walls are still covered with the most vibrant displays of student art; science projects are on display here and there; computer generated reports on a wide variety of topics are posted in every nook and cranny; we've done programs and concerts and the usual end of the year field day and picnics and what not -- all just as if there were no FINAL END looming...

Final school days are always difficult for me. I find it hard to navigate the swirl of emotions that the ending of a school year brings: the exhaustion mingles with the relief and the exhileration and the sense of accomplishment and celebration to spin me into an emotional tumble that leaves me frequently teary-eyed and shaken. I am simply a feeler. It is how I do what I do. This year, all of that is magnified by the enormous realization that when I let these children go for the last time, there will be no coming back... because, as a teacher, that coming back is one of the big payoffs for the work that is done so much of the time on sheer faith...

Teaching is a work of heart. We plant and nurture, weed and water, and tend in metaphoric gardens where we hardly ever get to see the harvest. The growing happens for only tiny spaces of time where we actually get to see any of it. Almost all of the actual fruit of our labor occurs outside of our vision. Oh, it is true that I may get to see whether or not a student can perform some task well enough to "give it back" to me on an exam. They may achieve the expected levels of competency in terms of the content and curriculum. This is expected, and I'm darn good at delivering the content and achieving the outcomes. But I teach children, not just subjects. The "product" is a fully fledged, working, breathing, decent, healthy human person -- not a "widget." That takes lots of time; lots of hands; lots of hearts...

Every now and then, when I can stay in place for a bit, and they can grow for awhile, I get to see just a bit of what might come to pass--

This last week, at field day, I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes talking with J. She was an eighth grade student of mine last year. I've known her, and taught her since she was in the 5th grade. She's has diagnosed learning differences, an Individual Education Plan (IEP), and as long as I knew her, school was hard. She worked with a kind of diligence and dedication that is rare in one so young. Mathematics was something that was her strength, but when we got to the higher levels, and the topics became more abstract and "squirmier," she began to get a little angry with me by times. It was as if even her trusted and reliable math had suddenly turned on her. Still, she would hold me to the fire day after day; chasing me down with continual questions and the demand that I explain over and over and differently and better until she would get it somehow. She and I worked each other to a frazzle on more than one day. She never quit and neither did I. We kept on believing in each other, and on the night she graduated from the eighth grade, I was proud to give her the Math Achievement award. When she started high school, the counselors there placed her in what they termed "College Option" courses. This is a track for students that might go to college, but also may not. There is no real expectation that that will occur. She stayed in College Option math classes for her first semester, and was earning such high marks that she insisted that they move her up to "College Prep" level courses. With her parents backing, she won the day, and finished the year in College Prep mathematics. Not only did she move up a to the higher level classes, but she did so well there that she was able to be exempted from her end of the year exams due to her overall grades for the year. She was so proud when she told me... but not nearly as proud as I was of her -- for her learning, but even more for her confidence and ferocity and joy.

Thursday as we dismissed for the day and the eighth grade walked out the door waving goodbye for the last time. I felt the tears come. This is the group that has made me just crazy for the last few weeks. It is always true of 8th graders at the end of the school year. They get done before it is over with; become totally self-absorbed, nasty, ugly, ornery. By the time they leave, long before, we are ready to have them go. And yet, and yet, when they go, I weep. This group especially -- are my wolves. This group when they came into my care were so feral. So badly parented, mostly. So wild and so needy. I told them, day after day after day, that they were special, good, kind, better than anyone suspected. I told them that people had underestimated them, and that they were destined to do good things. I told them that I knew that they were not the worst class, but the best. I believed in them fiercely, until they finally, reluctantly, began to believe in themselves. When they leave us, it will be to head off to some of our city's finest schools with a whole passle of impressive scholaships and awards. They have made us proud. They are still a pretty feral bunch, but they are far from the worst. They are my wolves, but they are a beautiful bunch of young animals.

In two days, I will let go of M. He's another one that I've invested an awful lot of heart into. I first "met" M when he wasn't even really mine yet. At the time, he was a brand new 5th grader in our school, and I was the 7th grade homeroom teacher, with the room across the hall and just down a bit from his classroom. M has Asperger's, a disability that impacts the ability to interpret other people's body language and facial responses and emotions. Asperger's folks are not able to interact socially the way most of the rest of us do. They are often very bright, but can seem very odd to the rest of the world. But I raised my own Asperger's kid, so I had a bit of an inside track with M. Every afternoon, at dismissal time, as M would hang outside the door of the 5th grade room, I'd play a silly game with him about his being in charge of getting his teacher organized and ready to go (it's a long story -- you would have to have been there). The whole thing appealed to his weird sense of humor, and didn't really require much from him in terms of connecting to me. It became a way for me to engage him, gently. When M came to me as a student the following year, I already had a basis for continuing the relationship with him. He continued to rely on me for cues about how to interpret the increasingly complex social world of junior high. I'm really not sure how much math I've taught M -- he performs erratically depending on how he feels about connecting to the rest of us on any given day. This is the nature of his disability. I do know that when things get intense emotionally or socially, I can almost always be sure that I will see M's eyes searching for mine from across the room -- looking for affirmation and some kind of guidance. For a student who nearly always avoids direct eye contact, that single act of seeking contact is enormously intimate, and telling. He knows that I will give him a nod or a smile or a shake of the head that will let him know if he has got the situation figured out correctly -- if he is "doing the right thing." He always checks with me. For M, I worry. Who will be there for him in his new school? Who will he look to when he needs to check? Will he have enough of me in his head to be able to match up the situations and get the affirmations he needs? I want to believe he's ready to go on and do it by himself. I want to believe that the universe will send him someone who will know just exactly what he needs next... I need to trust that will happen... Because, ready or not, I have to let him go.

I have to let them all go, and I am so not ready.

I'd spend this weekend telling all their stories. If I could. I'd write to each and all and tell them how wonderfully and powerfully made they are. But that is selfish. I've left my mark. I've sown and tended. The work is done in this field. Time to move on.

swan