SCHOOL TALK: End of School Year Summons Host of Feelings
At end-of-year culminations in June, parents gathered in classrooms to learn from their children, the experts, about the semester’s studies—birds, farmers’ markets, New Amsterdam, the Westward Expansion. Everyone was proud and happy, and I felt that way, too.
But beneath all that ran a stream of melancholy as the end of the year approached.
After the culminations came the class picnics and graduation and Field Day, as predictable as the days of the week.
Working in a school is like Groundhog Day—every year you do it a little bit differently and, hopefully, a little bit better. You adapt to present circumstances, make some changes, and start new projects. But the basic proposition is the same—the students arrive in September and leave in June, taller and more confident, better readers, writers and math students.
Year after year, we watch children transforming before our eyes, until they march across the stage and accept their diplomas.
I’ve watched many of the teachers grow up, too, from eager beginners to experienced professionals. Many now wear engagement or wedding rings, and this year we had six pregnant staff members at the same time.
The last day was a blur of emotion, hugs from parents and kids laden with shopping bags crammed with artwork, notebooks and spelling quizzes. A few little girls were crying in the yard as they hugged their teachers goodbye.
I remember that feeling. I used to walk home on the last day of school with reddened eyes, convinced I would never again have a teacher as wonderful as Miss Harper (or Miss Evans or Mrs. Lipton). But of course, there was always another great teacher around the corner.
We can all summon up that feeling of being released at the end of the school year. Is the melancholy I feel a longing for my own childhood?
When I walk into the school the next day—for there are some of us who do not say goodbye on the “last day”—there is a palpable difference. It’s not just that I’m wearing shorts and flip flops. Even if the bulletin boards weren’t bare and the sign-in book hadn’t been put away, I would be able to feel the hollowness.
I climb the stairway, where no posters hang advertising “Book Exchange,” “First Grade Farmers’ Market,” or “Pilgrim Movie—coming soon!”
Outside the kindergarten classrooms, the lunch box bins are gone and a flap of bright blue paper hangs forlornly from a bulletin board.
The assistant principal is already at work in the conference room, creating a schedule of all the enrichment classes and teacher prep periods and lunchtimes for the fall—a time-consuming job that demands all her attention.
The principal is finishing up teacher evaluations and next year’s hiring. She is keeping close tabs on her budget and enrollment for the fall.
Over the summer I will keep in touch via email with families planning to move to our zone from overseas or out of state or uptown. It’s a waiting game—how many of them will actually come? The arrival of these new students affects not only class size but how many classes there will be and how many new teachers are needed.
In the hallways, the custodians are whistling. While they have to clean the school building from top to bottom over the summer, wax the floors, paint walls, and repair leaky sinks, the schedule is looser and they will have some time off.
The teachers who are leaving, either for another position or motherhood, are in their old classrooms, packing up. They stop in the office to drop off their keys and say goodbye again, but with no tears this time. That was yesterday.
One day this month I will begin working on the August letter to families, that simple but thrilling document that reveals next year’s teacher and will mark the end of summer.
But not yet. First it’s time to experience July—the heat, the sweet wetness of popsicles from the ice cream truck, an interminable game of Monopoly, or maybe a case of poison ivy.
So, take a swim, eat a peach, have a new idea—or two or three. And parents, don’t forget to read with your children every day this summer! It does make a difference.
Connie Schraft is P.S. 89’s parent coordinator. For questions and comments, write to her at connie@tribecatrib.com.