Our Stories Have Come Together
My thesis for my final speech: "Like the firefly, you already know how to make light."
As happy as I am that the school year is over, I am going to miss these students so much. I’m excited for what this summer is going to bring – new house, new people, new writing opportunities, new adventures – but I want to come back from this summer to these same kids.
That’s the best and worst part of teaching – having to meet a new crop of students each year. If you have a really difficult class, it’s nice to be able to say goodbye to them at the end of the year and look forward to something new. But if you have a really great class that clicks well with you and that you’ve developed a good rapport with, it’s hard to say goodbye. At the end of this year already:
- One girl bought me my favorite color nail polish as a way of saying thank you, just because she remembered I said I liked the color.
- One girl raised her hand in class and thanked me for helping her through a difficult time in her life. She said the emails I sent her when she was at home helped her realize that everything would be OK.
- One guy said he was glad he had my class because he did a lot of work he could be proud of.
- Two students wrote me page-long letters talking about how inspiring I was to them this year.
- My students who never sat still during one single word I said listened to my entire, 50-minute “final thoughts” speech (a shorter, written version is here) without moving one inch. Also, the speech made six students in separate classes cry.
- And oh so much more.
I’m already wondering how this awesome year came about. What can I do to recreate these experiences and build on them next year? What did I do differently this year that I didn’t do last year?
I can’t answer these questions now; there is no formula for a good school year, and so much of it is out of my control. I can, however, take comfort in knowing that this year’s students and I will be in touch long after this year is over. Like I told them, in true English major metaphor fashion: “We had separate stories before this year began. Now, our stories have come together, and you cannot part them again. We are now a part of each other’s lives, each other’s stories. You can’t change that.”