At 2:50 yesterday afternoon my second graders were lined up with their backpacks, their book boxes which I'd given them, their name tags which we had packed carefully and some of them still held their cupcakes from our end of year party in their hands … and they went out the door the same way they had done every day this year, streaming into the main hall and then out the double glass front doors, for which you need a badge to get in but from which anyone can walk out of into the world, to the front of the school to meet their parents.
It had been raining all day but the sun broke through and shone on children running up and down and laughing. I brought one of them her coat, which she had forgotten. I gave another child who simply will not bring a backpack to school a plastic shopping bag of his school materials and his report card and told him to take it to his mother.
Those Hard Goodbyes
One of my favorite students came back to give me a hug and he was choked up and started to cry. He had grown so much this year. He had gone from not understanding reading at all to being a capable reader and had shown real strength at math, answering the example questions I called out before the others. But more than that, I had seen him grow out of self-doubt into confidence, the confidence of a child that was loved by his class, appreciated by his friends, and respected and cheered on by his teacher. He was a different person now.
Of course they're all different children now and they are growing up. Traditionally the moment you walk out of the doors at the end of second grade you are a third grader.
Oh sure, they'll come back in the fall, but they won't be in my class.
I Don’t Cry
I've learned not to cry. I learned not to cry long before I had to dismiss my second graders. I had a big brother and he used to try to scare me and so I learned not to show feelings back when I was in second grade. My home life wasn't all roses. When I was a kid, most of the time, I learned it's best not to tell people.
I know how not to cry but I'm getting too old for all this grandstanding and trying not to show your feelings and being ‘big,’ and now as I write this tears start to stream down my face and I feel pain and loss and the passage of time which is so inexorable, and which I have struggled against, futilely, since I was 15. I have to tell you that it feels sad to lose my second graders.
I told them they were just a great class. They were a wild selection of passionate learners and emotionally needy students who sometimes made some wonky behavior choices…somehow we made it work. I was exhausted for months, day after day struggling, but underneath I saw, as I watched them leave, that we were deeply connected, a group of people on a learning mission, and as such groups go, we had a remarkable year.
What Was Good?
What was good? The order in the classroom that allowed all of us to know what we needed to do next, the numbered tables, the seat pockets, table points for each table, working together to win points and get prizes, playing Starfall at the end of the day, doing math centers and reading centers and small groups and morning meeting where we sat in a circle and voted on something. Maybe something as simple as whether you preferred soccer or football, or maybe something important like whether we would work independently or in groups, although, for all that, they always choose groups.
Problem Solving and Discourse
We had discussions in which I posed questions and they answered. I helped them refine their answers and think discursively, solving problems, entering into the intellectual processes of reasoning things out that makes a discerning person. And regardless of who they were, all of them grew in this process. Discourse! We had discourse in our second grade. We broke questions down and we reasoned them out. We did math problems two different ways, and we got the same answers twice. That, if you think about it, is baby's first mathematical proof.
Endings Can Be Sad
One of my students, a girl who is full of passion but a lot of the passion is anger at other students, who chewed crayons and pieces of paper and then spit them out in inappropriate places, she who told me that other kids are mean and so she has to get them back, this child just broke into sobs as we walked through those glass doors.
She cried heaving gasps and said “Mrs. C, Mrs C, I don't want to leave you and I don't want to leave our class!” Her face got blotchy and red. She was truly overwhelmed. I hugged her and told her it would be okay and I felt inadequate because I couldn't really make her stop crying. I could only tell her that eventually she would feel better… and that didn't seem to be enough. She was still sobbing, her face still blotched red, as she started walking home.
I watched the crying student walk away in the sunlight, and I thought of sending her a postcard over the summer and I thought of sending her mom a text. But then I thought no, this is not something that can be fixed by sending an email or a phone call or going and doing a home visit. This is not inability to get along with classmates, this is the realization that everything good has an ending.
I saw that overall, our classroom was a happy event for these children and although it's sad that it's ending we can’t make it last forever. We can only remember the year or forget it.
First Day of Summer
The next morning I woke up and I heard the voice of one of the students in my head. She was a constant early finisher who loved her work and just wanted more learning. She was a light in the classroom every day. As I woke up, in my head I heard her voice say, as she said to me hundreds of times during the year, ”I'm done, Mrs. C., what should I do now?” Ah. This was the flip side of the coin. They had lost their class but now they had greater freedom, and they could do more, because they had learned. And I thought to myself, “Well precious student, it's summer, so now you get to choose for yourself.” Pause. “You might try the library.” And I smiled a little smile. Now let us turn our minds to summer.