Closing

I can't believe it's been 20 days since I wrote on this blog.  The hiatus has not been self-imposed.  The schedule I've lived out, both at school and in LIFE in general has kept me away from whatever it is that sends me to type in this white open space that eventually becomes a blog post.  I last wrote about being a part of something very early and very still. 

And I am happy to report that, despite the intensity of the life I'm living, there have been moments for 'very early and very still'.  I'm drinking coffee out of a mug from Molly and the windows are open, and I love spring.  It's nice to live on the third floor, as I've said a thousand times before, because when you go to the window, you first see the green of the trees, and when you really sit down to listen, it's the rush of the breeze that you hear before anything else. 

Every year I find that the most simple things in the spring are the most steadying to me.  Basic please and thank yous, color returning to nature, the creativity of different kinds of flowers, my old worn out desk shoved up to the window, marking a place of inspiration for me.  And despite temporarily intense stressors at school, there is also the magical moment every year when I realize I have planned out lessons to the end of the year, and that they will WORK.  And they will run themselves.  And I need to keep up with them and it will all be ok. 




This is the fifth year that I have ended a school year.  I am happy to report that this is the most calming, the easiest, and the most in sync with the real things of my life.  Really more of the stress for me this month has been in travel and planning outside of school.  Good things to go to, all, and things I'd never miss, but with any busy weekend, a person sees that Monday comes quickly.  I have been trying to be creative in finding the small spaces for the real things of my life at school as well. 

Five years ago, I was teaching in a 4th grade classroom in Lakeville. I subbed for a month, and helped a woman who had been teaching for 30 years in that one room, close out her classroom.  She was sick, and couldn't teach through May.  I had a lot of parents I didn't know coming in with flowers and wondering about her (and me) and in this time, at the beginning of my career, I saw the end of someone else's. 

I have distinct memories of this place, and strong admiration for what it forged in me.  Bob, the janitor, became one of those twinkly-eyed people in my life who watched out for me and told me things that would make my life easier, but only when I asked for it.  I met someone who has, to this day, been more of a fairy godmother teacher in my life than any other teacher I've known.  Her name was Mrs. M., and I felt that I towered over her, and when I came to her, all stressed out about really a lot of nothing, she would talk to me about how chocolate helps.  And now I can see that she was trying to tell me about the close of school.   On the last day of school, when all of the teachers were blowing bubbles and the kids were on the buses waving back to us, she smiled and laughed and then turned to me and said, 'God bless the 5th grader teachers.'   (No kidding.)

In this time, I saw really natural things come out in my style of teaching.  And I also saw things that just bombed in front of me.  When I admitted that the kids I was teaching were learning NOTHING about new math (truly, truly, nothing), my fairy godmother teacher said it was ok.  (Probably it wasn't, but whatever...now it was 5 years ago.) 

When I let a kid eat a candy bar for lunch, and nothing more, and then run around for a half hour in 90 degree weather, no one laughed in my face when I was SURPRISED that he threw up in the hallway.  They just helped me navigate kids around it, and set up a movie, and get the kid to the nurse.  (He thought it was funny, and I learned that this CAN be a source of pride in 4th grade boy culture.)  

When I literally could not set up the science lesson on levers and pulleys, let alone teach it, the beloved 4th grade teacher came in for the afternoon, and taught for me.  It was a good lesson in swallowing my pride, and inviting this woman who had to give up so to me to come back into her element.  I will not soon forget the look of understanding and grace I received from her while she was teaching levers and pulleys.  Or what comes from removing the lens of pride.  Honestly, I could not even untangle the knots from the pulleys in the box before the lesson.  It's one of the only moments when I was there that I felt like really and truly crying. 

Forever, that elementary school in Lakeville, which for all other purposes now would seem very foreign and soulfully stressful to me, was a beacon of hope.  And that was very strange beginning to all of my closings.

Since then, the end of the school year has meant moving from one little downtown school location to one in the country...bigger, more developed, and growing with the school.  Sometimes I have left confused or like a zombie or frustrated, but this year, it all became a little easier.  And I know when the whoosh of relief will come to me (June 15 this year, the day after the D.C. trip, the week after the last day of school) and until then, I am ok.  Ebb and flow is very real, and May 29 is definitely in this closing plan.

Now it is time to do more grading.  In reality, I mean literally and collectively, hundreds and hundreds of assignments...are you wondering to yourself if I'm going over the top at the end?  I really don't think I am.  It's running itself, but it's still very much 'the school year at St. Croix Prep'.  

For the sake of sanity, I will just use the (very fake, but very real) teacher conversion chart and say 'hours' instead.  (And show you this picture because, though it's been 2 years since it was taken, it is still the look of anticipation and exhaustion I have every fall and every spring.)