While you are reading this, I am meeting my last classes of the semester at George Mason University. I have borrowed Frank Kermode’s phrase for the header of this column because, at the conclusion of every semester, the class writes about endings.
Everyone tries to make sense of endings. Did we end the project/semester/year well? New Year’s resolutions are clichéd caricatures of making an end because people often–quite cynically–make resolutions they know they can’t keep. We think that a list of what we should have done negates all we didn’t do. Is that how auld lang syne works?
Not for my students. As they struggle with this last paper, due on the last class, they not only explain the ending they’re writing about, but make its significance clear.
A few write about the end of high school, and the ambivalence about their impending “freedom” versus the security they felt at home and school. Others write about the deaths of relatives or friends, some of whom died at appropriately old ages, and some of whom had unnaturally short lives. The significance of the latter is hard to articulate; the unexpected and unfair early deaths often leave the writer with a vow to remember that occasionally, life doesn’t make sense.
What each student addresses at the end of their writing is the question of what’s left after “the end.” Is it our memory that keeps autumn alive, even when it’s winter? Or is it something organic—still in the ground, that helps turn winter into spring?
Relatives live on in our memories and our DNA. What about past events? Are they only recorded in memory and on paper, or are they still alive, still around us in some physical way?
As you can see, these papers become quite philosophical, and that’s why I give the assignment in the first place. As a semester ends, it’s important for every student to place it in the context of their educations and their lives.
Riley’s paper, on the Tao way of looking at death, uses an image that captures this: life is like a match—lit briefly, then blown out and tossed away, of no more use. But the smoke generated by the match lives on for a time.
When Riley applied that analogy to his outlook on death, I saw a further analogy to the end of my three classes this week, no longer of use to these students. The classes will end.
But something will continue, at least for a time. I hope it is the ability to read others’ writing closely, and to write clearly and concretely. But yesterday Aaron suggested another way this class might live on.
On Halloween, Aaron asked his children to write scary stories—something he had never done before. But he now loves to write and wants his children to value writing as well. One of his children really got into the task and produced something fabulous; perhaps a new match has been lit.
Teachers always hope our lessons live beyond the walls of our classrooms, and Aaron’s own “lesson” on Halloween guarantees that this semester’s ending is, for at least a few, a new beginning.
What Kids Are Reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre, data from libraries, and data from booksellers. Information on the books below came from the list of Amazon.com childrens’ books and are listed in order of popularity.
Books on Endings, Death, and Beginnings
1. Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings by Shel Silverstein
2. The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin
3. Once Upon a Time, the End (Asleep in 60 seconds) by Geoffrey Kloske and Barry Blitt
4. It’s Not the End of the World by Judy Blume
5. Not the End of the World by Geraldine Mccaughrean
6. I Miss You: A First Look at Death by Pat Thomas and Leslie Harker
7. What is Death by Etan Boritzer
8. Help Me Say Goodbye: Activities for Helping Kids Cope When a Special Person Dies by Janis Silverman
9. When Dinosaurs Die: A Guide to Understanding Death by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown
10. What’s Heaven? by Maria Shriver and Sandra Speidel
