Greener Grass

Tomorrow is the last day of school. As always I approach the final day of the school year with mixed emotions.

As a teacher I greatly enjoy the summer time off (even though I usually pick up some type of work to help out), but I am also aware that tomorrow I will have to say goodbye to my students.

I hope that I have helped them. Besides the maps, cultures and history that I’ve thrown at them I hope that my students are better prepared to make it in life than they would have been without my influence. I pray that they will continue to grow, mature and make good choices. I fear that some of them will not – and it consoles me little that I have done as much as I could to help redirect them.

I know that I will miss them. I have never had two students that were the same. Every student reminds me of how awesome God is and how uniquely he has created each one of us. While new students will take their desks, no one can replace my students and what they have meant to me. Their smiles, laughter, thoughts, ideas, humor, quarky behavior, stories and personalities I shall miss. That is why I don’t want tomorrow to end, but since I know it will I will try to enjoy the moments and the parting.

I wish I could teach them again someday but I know that probably wont happen – high school scares me. Besides I’m pretty good at basketball and sprinting when my competition is 6th graders. This is one case where I don’t want the playing field to be level, I want to win, so I teach 6th grade. It is rather pathetic, but at least I’m honest about it. :>)

In my first year of teaching I remember asking Mrs. Perry (the science teacher on my team at the time) how could a teacher ever forget their students. I didn’t think it was possible to forget these students after spending a year with them. In the three years since my first (3+1 = 4 years teaching) I have forgotten many names. I remember faces and I hope that the students that I bump into don’t know that I can’t recall their names when I say “Yeh, and how are you doing? How are things at ___, you’re in ___ grade, right?” The sad thing is I have only three grades to pick from (7th, 8th, and 9th) and I still get it wrong half the time.

So tomorrow I will say goodbye again to 150 students that I think that I will never forget… and as life continues on their names will slowly fade (last names will go first). I wonder if the lessons I have taught them this year will disappear as well. What things will they retain? Will it be the 80 days that I was at the top of my game or the 10 where I was snappy and sarcastic?

In my last classes I show a slideshow with photos from my different trips overseas and give them the parting advice “get out of the country.” I then show them embarrassing photos of me when I was there age, an awkward 9th grader, a scrawny senior. I tell them stories of my feelings of insecurity, lonerness, early loves and dead monkeys.

The one lesson that I oft repeat is how on my first long trip out of the country (a trip to Indonesia with Teen Missions in 1990) I was homesick the whole time and couldn’t wait to get home. You know the grass is always greener on the other side thing. Anyway as soon as I got home, guess where I wanted to be?

Since that trip I have tried to be content where I am, and enjoy the moments for what they are without wanting to get to the NEXT thing. Course this may explain why I am often late – I get caught up in the moment and know that while the future may be green, life is in the present.

So tomorrow I will say goodbye. I hope that I have helped them. Sometimes I feel very insignificant and that nothing I do will really matter. Kids from good families will achieve great things, and kids from dysfunctional families will propitiate the dysfunction. But I can’t give up hope, for while I may be only a minor footnote in each of these students’ lives, I am still a footnote. I remind myself that my life was radically changed by two footnotes in my life in the 5th grade (Mr. Hoover and Mrs. Harris). Long story… I only tell it to my students, so I guess its a classroom exclusive.

The ironic thing is that these teachers don’t know how much of an influence they had on me. I’ve tried to look them up since then but there are a lot of Hoovers and Harrises out there. Of course if I did ever get in touch with them (one day I will find them) they may say something like “Yeh, and how are you doing…”

Which leads to my last piece of advice. If you ever get in touch with an old teacher of yours, introduce yourself – don’t make them guess, they will probably get it wrong… and that’s just not a nice way to treat a footnote.