It’s the bottom of the ninth, the third act (fifth act if you’re Shakespeare), dénouement, coda, epilogue and postscript. In other words, the school year is nearly over.
If you are a student, you have awakened at 5:30 a.m. for the last time until September, you have downloaded your last Sparks Notes summary, made your last frantic IM to others in your class about the project due in six hours.
As teachers, we have turned in our grades, begun to pack our rooms up, backed up our computer files, thrown out the student papers and projects never picked up. One more faculty meeting, perhaps a graduation ceremony — and then freedom.
The last “real” school day was Friday. Today a few students will stop by to pick up grades, but Friday was the day to clean out lockers and finish up exams. The halls were littered with old papers and binders. Some students arrived with neon pink or green hair to celebrate the last day.
They assured teachers not to worry; it was only food coloring.
Newly hired teachers were shown around the building and introduced to those in their departments; not one of them will remember us in September, but perhaps the place will look more familiar. Those teachers who are on their way out — usually to another school — keep a low profile, clean out their desks, avoid large group meetings. It’s no fun to be a lame duck. Ask any politician.
It’s all surreal. Have you ever been in a school with no students? Maybe election day when Virginia schools have teacher workdays? It’s an eerie place. The heart is absent; only the minor organs still function.
How do any of us make sense of the year that has passed? The last assignment in Senior Seminar is one that asks students to evaluate their educational experience. It’s a challenge for students because they are not interested in “making sense” of the past.
Instead, they are full of the future: beach week, college orientation, summer jobs. They want a clean break.
When asked to assess what has benefited them most educationally and what they wish others had told them before they entered senior year, students reply honestly and poignantly. They benefited most from classeswhere teachers valued them as human beings and wish others had told them what they have now forgotten their teachers really did tell them at the beginning of the year.
They just weren’t listening.
And so it goes for teachers, counselors, administrators and support staff. We benefit from being treated as though we are valued members of the school community, and warnings of what to avoid usually are forgotten in the crush of daily demands and general fatigue.
Why can’t we learn from our mistakes? Why don’t we go into the end-of-year with satisfaction instead of ambivalence? How do we make sense of this ending?
We are more like our students than we readily admit — without the pink and green hair. We just want to leave, not to evaluate our year. But it’s imperative, for the future, that we remember the past. By remembering, we just might do it better next year.
Erica Jacobs teaches Oakton High School and George Mason University. She can be reached at ejacob1gmu.edu.
