Thoughts on Teaching & Learning: The End of The School Year

Over the past several weeks, I have found myself doing a lot of reflection trying to get this online teaching right.  I keep meaning to get my thoughts on paper but then get caught up in the day-to-day work of teaching in this pandemic era.  I know if I can catch my breath, there is a lot to learn and reflect on during this time. So, I decided that every day in May, I will share my thoughts on Teaching and Learning.  This is Day 11.

This is our last full week of school. I knew it was coming.  I thought I was ready.  Saying goodbye and ending the school year is always hard. Usually on the last day of school, I can hardly breathe, and I don't take a full breath until the buses have pulled away. I thought this year would be different because we knew--we've known for weeks--that we wouldn't be able to say goodbye in person. And we've settled into this remote/pandemic learning.  And it's been okay.

But then I started to plan this last 7 days with my students--trying to make it feel like a celebration, but without actually being together. And it is hard.

Then I saw this tweet from Jen Schwanke:

And I realized that yes, it is like time stopped. As much as I thought we'd be out of school for more than the 3 weeks that the governor announced on March 13, I certainly assumed we'd be back at least for a bit of time. I never thought we'd never be together in our classroom again--in the room we had created together. I never thought that kids wouldn't have the chance to do those things that we ask them to do so that the goodbyes are bearable and that they leave knowing how loved they are. I never thought I'd be cleaning the room, their room, alone.  

This week, with last day virtual celebrations being planned and end-of-year checklists being shared, it hit me that we are going to have to say goodbye on Google Meet. And I got really sad. I realized that usually, during this last week of school, we clean and we talk and we read and we have extra recess and we look at old photos and that even though we can do some of this from our homes, and in Google Meet, it isn't the same.

I started meeting with kids this week--to have final celebrations and conversations. None of us know how to end the school year like this.  But we are doing our best.

I have admitted how difficult this remote/pandemic is from about day 2 but nothing has been as hard as this last week of trying to close out a year without having all the time we were supposed to have.  Dismantling something alone that we weren't finished creating together. Thanks for the warning, Jen.

Poetry Friday -- The Final Golden Shovel

Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right. ~Henry Ford

Blessing 

You are going to fail, whether

you want to or not, in big and small ways. You

can spend your time worrying about that, or you can believe

that failure is valuable. It’s the way we learn. You

are in charge of how you think about your mistakes. You can

embrace them, trying to fail better every day, or

you can wallow in your catastrophes. What you believe

will determine how well you

live. I can’t

predict your future, but I have a good feeling that you’re

going to be more than all right.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

In April, I wrote a golden shovel for each of my students, using a quote chosen by each student as the striking line. Only one poem was missing from the collection: mine. Here it is. Number 31. It is the blessing I bestowed upon the Hahn Squad as I sent them out into the world and off to middle school. 

Buffy has the Poetry Friday Roundup for today at Buffy's Blog.

And it's time to gather Roundup hosts for July - December. That post is here.

High Flight

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
~Kevin Durant


High Flight

The last day of school is in sight. You can’t imagine how hard

it is to release my masterpieces, say goodbye to my best work.

Launching you, I imagine the sigh of wing-beats

as you fly away, soaring with your talent,

your sense of humor, your desire to set the world right. When

you alight again next fall, don’t you dare hide your talent,

head under wing, letting others lead. Genius doesn’t

need adult plumage to rise and spiral. All genius needs is work.

And remember, the work of flight is joyful, not hard.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

Poetry Friday

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Sarah Browning

THE END

Just when the story's getting good,
I must close the book and return it
to the rightful owner.

I have marked up the text a bit:
underlined key phrases,
jotted notes in the margins.

I've dogeared some pages,
left smears of optimism,
streaked whole paragraphs with my tears,

slept with the book under my pillow,
taken it with me everywhere,
thrown it at the wall in frustration (on more than one occasion).

You'd think by now I would have learned to live
with never knowing the ends of these stories.
I have not.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2015



There are just a few more days of school left, and I am getting ready to say goodbye, in most cases forever, to the people who have been my life for the past 9 months -- this crazy, quirky bunch of students who bloomed late, but bloomed GLORIOUSLY.

Matt has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme.

Poetry Friday: The Day After the Last Day of School

The Day After the Last Day of School

It's like you've been on a long hike
through deep mud
in boots that don't fit
with a pack that has gotten progressively heavier
(the weight was added gradually;
you didn't notice so much).

Then suddenly before you
there is a grassy meadow
a cool brook
tall trees and deep shade.

The pack evaporates,
the muddy boots disappear.
With the weight gone, it feels like you are floating.

You are very tired.
You lean back against a welcoming tree and sleep.
You dream of hiking.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013




Happy end of the school year to all who've gotten there! I hope your final gift was not the gift of one more round of the "class crud" (mine was).

Now comes "The Long Weekend." Time enough for friends and family, for reading and writing, for professional learning, for making plans for the next big hike (how to keep that pack lighter, finding boots that fit better, looking for a path that stays on higher ground...)

Tabatha has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at The Opposite of Indifference.

If you'd like to sign up for a Poetry Friday Roundup slot for July-December 2013, the calendar is here.

Great End-Of-Year Teacher Gift

Brontorina
by James Howe
illustrated by Randy Cecil
Candlewick, 2010

Here's a book that says, "Thank you for making school/your classroom fit my child rather than making my child fit school/your classroom."

I hope that's what you'd like to say to your child's teacher!!

(Franki's more complete review here.)

Balance

by Hugh MacLeod at Gapingvoid.com

Poetry Friday: Annie Dillard

There's a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud, and flower. Trees seem to do their feats so effortlessly. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn't make one. A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes; it splits, sucks, and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out ever more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air. (p. 114)

Along with intricacy, there is another aspect of the creation that has impressed me in the course of my wanderings...Look, in short, at practically anything--the coot's foot, the mantis's face, a banana, the human ear--and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He'll stop at nothing.  (p.138)

What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that flouish in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their very reality. I want to have things as multiply and intricately as possible and visible in my mind. Then I might be able to sit on the hill by the burnt books where the starlings fly over, and see not only the starlings, the grass field, the quarried rock, the viney woods, Hollis Pond, and the mountains beyond, but also, and simultaneously, feathers' barbs, springtails in the soil, crystal in rock, chloroplasts streaming, rotifers pulsing, and the shape of the air in the pines. And, if I try to keep my eye on quantum physics, if I try to keep up with astronomy and cosmology, and really believe it all, I might ultimately be able to make out the landscape of the universe. Why not? (p.141)

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard.



Yes, I'm playing a little fast and loose with the idea of poetry here, but I've been listening to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek on my commute to and from school for the past few weeks, and Annie Dillard's words are the poetry I've been hearing as I drive through this wet, green, lush, pulsing, growing spring. The mystery of the earth re-making itself has pushed to the back of my mind the (too much) to-do lists that come with the end of the school year.

And now, suddenly, it is here. The end of the school year. Our last day. The mystery and miracle of watching children accumulate another year of knowledge, skills, manners, personality will be put on hold until the end of August. All of my intimate knowledge of the intricacies of this group of children -- their handwriting, the way their smiles come slow or fast, how much I need to suggest or tease or pressure them to do their very best -- this all will be lost by the end of the summer, in order to make room for the next batch, brood, class.


Heidi has the Poetry Friday roundup today at my juicy little universe.