Making the Transition

There is a wry bit of humor that goes around in teacher circles. It says that the three best things about teaching are June, July, and August.

I suppose there is something to that. The school year is wearing in many ways: long days that begin at 5:00 AM, and often don't end until 5:00 PM or 6 or 7 or 8 or even later... Weekends that are filled with planning and grading and phone calls to parents. The endless schlepping back and forth of the ubiquitous, heavy teacher bags and boxes full of "stuff." The emotion laden work of wondering how to do the best one can for all the youngsters that come into one's care each year. The mysterious and often incomprehensible snakepit of school politics. Any teacher worth the name ends the school year tattered and frayed, in my experience. June, July, and August are not simply nice benefits -- they are necessities for the sake of health and sanity.

Still, I come to the end of a year, and the children leave, and the grades get figured, and the record cards get filled out, and the room gets (finally) cleaned up and closed up -- and I drag my weary body home at last, and I am left for a few days with a heavy sense of loss and grief that is hard to explain to those who do not do this work... So I hope you will all forgive me, but I need to mourn for the kiddos I spent this year with and who I now need to release to the summer and the teacher who will have them next. I have loved them and they have been "mine" in a very deep and special way. Only teaching has this annual cycle of getting started anew and coming to love intensely and then having to let them go so suddenly over and over. Though I have done it for over a decade, I never ever seem to get the hang of keeping my heart out of harm's way...

I teach junior high age students -- 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. My teaching assignment has me instructing mathematics and computer classes, and I am responsible for a 7th grade homeroom class. It is that homeroom group that gets particularly to feel like "mine." In addition to all the zillion "housekeeping" details of any given day (attendance, and lunch count and the general stuff of a school), anything that they might "get into" around the place comes quickly back into my lap to deal with. They are "my kids" while they are at school.

This year's 7th graders were an "interesting" bunch: a pretty wild group with a number of difficult family situations and some less than charming social behaviors. Many of them were not what you would call "well parented" and they had a "reputation" that preceded them. Ours is a small school and this bunch had driven every teacher crazy from the time they were kindergarteners.

I've always figured that, as a teacher, my first job is to fall in love with every student. If I can find a way to do that, genuinely and honestly, I can almost always seduce them into learning darn near anything -- but these were wild children and I had my doubts. Still... I was determined to convince them that they were good and decent people with the potential to do great things. From the very first, I told them that I liked them and respected them and that I knew they would make me proud of them. I told them that I wanted to be able to brag about them to everyone in the school. We laughed together and were silly at every opportunity. They tried to gnaw my arms off... It was a monumental struggle, but, while I am submissive at home, I am absolutely dominant in my classroom. My wild children snapped and snarled but they began to be gentler with each other and with me by slow degrees.

One day, in mid-winter, we were out on the playground at recess and many of them were playing near the woods. Suddenly there was a micro-burst of wind and I heard the trees begin to pop ominously. I howled at the top of my lungs, "TO ME! TO ME!!!" My kids never hesitated for an instant. They came flying to me as fast as they could run -- as the giant trees crashed onto the playground only a few feet from where they had been playing moments before... Breathless, they huddled around me in a tight pack, and I felt just like a mother wolf, wanting to lick them all and make sure they were all OK... From that day on, I referred to them as "my wolves." (although not to their faces... they would not have understood what a great pack they had become and how much affection that appellation held for me).

The year went on and my wolves grew in knowledge and grace. I began to have people tell me what a nice group they were. I would simply smile and say, "thank you." It is amazing what happens when you tell people that they are good and strong and bright and decent.

Ours is a Catholic school. Each morning we open with prayer in the classroom. I have students lead this practice and exert very little control over it (since I am not myself a Catholic). I do insist that it be respectful, but I allow them to stand or recline around the edges in whatever groupings they choose, and the student leading sets the tone as she or he sees fit. On the last morning, as the youngster leading prayer got it all started by asking the group to stand up to pray, one of the other students looked around the room and said, "Hey! This is our last morning in the 7th grade, here in OUR room... Everybody, make a circle!" To my absolute shock, they said not a word -- simply moved quietly, together and gathered in a group together, and finished their morning prayers as a class. I was in tears before it was over... Amazing.

Later that same day, as it came time to clean out desks and wash desks and stack them all up, I had the group for a very short period of time. Other teachers had claims on them. I listed what we needed to do: take down bulletin boards, clean chalk boards, empty and clean the desks (using my old stand by -- shaving cream), and stack them against a blank wall. We had about 30 minutes time. My kids looked at that list, looked at each other, and went to town. Barely a word was spoken. They filled buckets and pulled staples and moved furniture like pros. It was the most amazing sight. I swear they were communicating by telepathy. In short order the room was down and cleaned and orderly and the floor was swept, too!!! Somewhere someone came up with a deck of cards and a set of poker chips and the whole gang flopped in a circle to play cards. What a great pack they have become.

Have a great summer, kiddos. Be good. Have fun. I will miss you.

Next year there will be new ones to love. Who knows what I will learn from them?

For now I am just awfully tired and awfully proud and still a little sad.

swan

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