What’s up with June anyway?
- Anonymous Middle School Teacher
Endings are hard. They might be the hardest thing to do well. Don't believe me? Go watch a movie. How many times have you come out of the movie theater and said, "The first two thirds of that movie were great, but the ending sucked"? If you're anything like me it's more often than not. And there is a reason for that. Endings are hard. They are the last part of something that we will experience. They come with so many expectations. We want everything we do to be wrapped up in a nice little bow. We want one shot to summarize the entire experience and blow our minds, both at once. We want all of our movies to have an ending as great as The Usual Suspects does. But nine times out of ten that doesn't happen. Mostly, by the time we get to the end of something we are so exhausted that we just roll over and fade out.
The same is true with the school year. After nine long tedious months we get to June and have so many expectations, so many ideas of what we could do to end the year with a bang, but nine times out of ten we are so exhausted and the students are so antsy that we all just roll over and fade out. But the issue also runs deeper than that. It's not a regular "I've worked really hard and now I'm tired" kind of exhaustion. It is an emotionally overwhelming exhaustion. And the thing that we forget is that the students are feeling it, too. Summer means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The end of the school year means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. No matter what the specific issue is, endings are not easy and thye need to be paid a lot more attention than we may think.
On the last day of my first year as a teacher, I was sitting in a classroom with several other teachers while students came in to collect their report cards, eat a doughnut and say goodbye for the summer. This was supposed to be a light day. We had no expectation that the students would stay for the whole day, and we didn't even want them to. Come in, get your report card and go home. That was the schedule. The doughnuts were an added bonus that one of the teachers had thought up for his students. The day was going very smoothly. The biggest incident up to this point was one of my students running up and down the hallway hugging everyone because for the first time in years he did not have to go to summer school.
Then another one of my students, Natalie, walked in to get her report card. She had done very well, so I was expecting this to be a rather smooth interaction with one of our more volatile students. Instead she walked in and started yelling at me. She recounted every single "unfair" thing that had happened to her at the school all year. Issues that had been resolved months earlier came back up as if they had just happened. She was yelling, she was crying, and she was ruining what was supposed to be a pleasant experience. She had barely looked at her report card and didn't even touch her doughnut.
After yelling at me for a good ten minutes, she just walked out. I sat back down with the other teachers having no idea what had just happened. This student really liked me. I had stood by her during some very difficult times during the year. Why was she turning on me on the very last day of school? We weren't going to see each other for a whole two months. Why would she want to leave on such a sour note?
And then it hit me. Leaving on a sour note was exactly what she wanted. School, as crazy of a place as it could be, was a safe space for her. We were a constant, maybe the only one, in her otherwise tumultuous life, and as her adviser I was the clearest representation of this safety. As much as Natalie talked about hating school and wanting to transfer, she actually loved the community that we had created there. It was the one place in her life where should could be sure that no matter what she said or did, she would be supported. Sometimes that support included being called out for her appropriate behaviors, but even when we were not accepting of her actions, we were accepting of her. And for that, she really loved us and came to depend on us.
So when the last day of school came around, it was too much for her to handle. What was she going to do for the next two months? How was she going to show us how much she appreciated what we had done for her? She couldn't. She didn't yet have the tools to express any of that. All she could do was get mad. If she was mad at the school, if she was mad at me, then she could deal with not seeing us for two months. It's a lot easier to say goodbye to people if you are mad at them. It's a lot easier to be away from people if you are the one choosing to be away from them. By reminding herself of all of the times that she was mad at the school and mad at me, she was able to convince herself that she didn't want to see us. By getting into a fight with me on the last day of school, she was able to convince herself that she was glad to be away from school for the next two months.
Saying goodbye is never easy. It's even harder when it's not your choice. It's also something that nobody teaches us how to do. We all know that from time to time we will have to say goodbye to things and people that we love and depend on. For many young people today, particularly in marginalized communities, summer means hours upon hours of unstructured time, stuck in a small, hot apartment with nothing to do.
If you want to make the next two and a half weeks of school worthwhile, throw out the curriculum and spend some time teaching your students how to say goodbye. Teach them that even though you will not see them for the next two months, it doesn't mean that you will forget about them. Teach them that even if you never see them again, it doesn't mean that you didn't care about them; it doesn't mean that the experiences that they had with you were not real and valuable; it doesn't mean that they cannot take what they have gotten out of the last year with them for the rest of their lives. New research has shown that reflection is an essential component in learning. Spend the next two weeks giving your students opportunities to reflect and relax. They may be resistant. Taking time to be reflective is not an easy thing to do, especially when you are dealing with such an emotionally charged time as the end of the year, but we do our young people a disservice when we rush through things and do not challenge them to do the hard emotional work of reflection and saying a proper goodbye.
And on that note, I will say goodbye.
Until next time.
Keep the questions coming,
Jonah
- I'd rather have some of the questions than know all of the answers
Posted in StudentsTeaching on Jun 09, 2010 - 10:35 AM
Question: According to the calendar there are still two and a half weeks of school left, but according to my students school ended the second the temperature in my classroom reached 90 degrees two weeks ago. I'm usually a laid back teacher who has a very good relationship with her students but at the end of the year they start bouncing off the wall and reverting to behaviors they haven't shown in months. Is there anything I can do about this or should I just suck it up and pray that nothing goes terribly wrong over the next two weeks?- Anonymous Middle School Teacher
Endings are hard. They might be the hardest thing to do well. Don't believe me? Go watch a movie. How many times have you come out of the movie theater and said, "The first two thirds of that movie were great, but the ending sucked"? If you're anything like me it's more often than not. And there is a reason for that. Endings are hard. They are the last part of something that we will experience. They come with so many expectations. We want everything we do to be wrapped up in a nice little bow. We want one shot to summarize the entire experience and blow our minds, both at once. We want all of our movies to have an ending as great as The Usual Suspects does. But nine times out of ten that doesn't happen. Mostly, by the time we get to the end of something we are so exhausted that we just roll over and fade out.
The same is true with the school year. After nine long tedious months we get to June and have so many expectations, so many ideas of what we could do to end the year with a bang, but nine times out of ten we are so exhausted and the students are so antsy that we all just roll over and fade out. But the issue also runs deeper than that. It's not a regular "I've worked really hard and now I'm tired" kind of exhaustion. It is an emotionally overwhelming exhaustion. And the thing that we forget is that the students are feeling it, too. Summer means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The end of the school year means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. No matter what the specific issue is, endings are not easy and thye need to be paid a lot more attention than we may think.
On the last day of my first year as a teacher, I was sitting in a classroom with several other teachers while students came in to collect their report cards, eat a doughnut and say goodbye for the summer. This was supposed to be a light day. We had no expectation that the students would stay for the whole day, and we didn't even want them to. Come in, get your report card and go home. That was the schedule. The doughnuts were an added bonus that one of the teachers had thought up for his students. The day was going very smoothly. The biggest incident up to this point was one of my students running up and down the hallway hugging everyone because for the first time in years he did not have to go to summer school.
Then another one of my students, Natalie, walked in to get her report card. She had done very well, so I was expecting this to be a rather smooth interaction with one of our more volatile students. Instead she walked in and started yelling at me. She recounted every single "unfair" thing that had happened to her at the school all year. Issues that had been resolved months earlier came back up as if they had just happened. She was yelling, she was crying, and she was ruining what was supposed to be a pleasant experience. She had barely looked at her report card and didn't even touch her doughnut.
After yelling at me for a good ten minutes, she just walked out. I sat back down with the other teachers having no idea what had just happened. This student really liked me. I had stood by her during some very difficult times during the year. Why was she turning on me on the very last day of school? We weren't going to see each other for a whole two months. Why would she want to leave on such a sour note?
And then it hit me. Leaving on a sour note was exactly what she wanted. School, as crazy of a place as it could be, was a safe space for her. We were a constant, maybe the only one, in her otherwise tumultuous life, and as her adviser I was the clearest representation of this safety. As much as Natalie talked about hating school and wanting to transfer, she actually loved the community that we had created there. It was the one place in her life where should could be sure that no matter what she said or did, she would be supported. Sometimes that support included being called out for her appropriate behaviors, but even when we were not accepting of her actions, we were accepting of her. And for that, she really loved us and came to depend on us.
So when the last day of school came around, it was too much for her to handle. What was she going to do for the next two months? How was she going to show us how much she appreciated what we had done for her? She couldn't. She didn't yet have the tools to express any of that. All she could do was get mad. If she was mad at the school, if she was mad at me, then she could deal with not seeing us for two months. It's a lot easier to say goodbye to people if you are mad at them. It's a lot easier to be away from people if you are the one choosing to be away from them. By reminding herself of all of the times that she was mad at the school and mad at me, she was able to convince herself that she didn't want to see us. By getting into a fight with me on the last day of school, she was able to convince herself that she was glad to be away from school for the next two months.
Saying goodbye is never easy. It's even harder when it's not your choice. It's also something that nobody teaches us how to do. We all know that from time to time we will have to say goodbye to things and people that we love and depend on. For many young people today, particularly in marginalized communities, summer means hours upon hours of unstructured time, stuck in a small, hot apartment with nothing to do.
If you want to make the next two and a half weeks of school worthwhile, throw out the curriculum and spend some time teaching your students how to say goodbye. Teach them that even though you will not see them for the next two months, it doesn't mean that you will forget about them. Teach them that even if you never see them again, it doesn't mean that you didn't care about them; it doesn't mean that the experiences that they had with you were not real and valuable; it doesn't mean that they cannot take what they have gotten out of the last year with them for the rest of their lives. New research has shown that reflection is an essential component in learning. Spend the next two weeks giving your students opportunities to reflect and relax. They may be resistant. Taking time to be reflective is not an easy thing to do, especially when you are dealing with such an emotionally charged time as the end of the year, but we do our young people a disservice when we rush through things and do not challenge them to do the hard emotional work of reflection and saying a proper goodbye.
And on that note, I will say goodbye.
Until next time.
Keep the questions coming,
Jonah
- I'd rather have some of the questions than know all of the answers
Tags for this entry:
k-12 education,
social-emotional learning,
middle school,
summer,
reflection
Comments
Jun 11, 2010 - 11:03 AM
Thanks for this beautiful post, Jonah. Learning how to say goodbye is something adults could learn more about, too. I’ve noticed it’s easier to avoid it and then deal with the emotions later, whereas processing it with young people will be more real and beneficial for the adults as well.
Melia Dicker
Jun 09, 2010 - 02:52 PM
I love this post, Jonah, because it resonates so much with my own experience and that of the students I’ve worked with. I’ve noticed that in any relationship, when it’s time to separate even temporarily—worse if it’s a more permanent separation—people start finding reasons to pick fights. You said it well: “It’s a lot easier to say goodbye to people if you are mad at them. It’s a lot easier to be away from people if you are the one choosing to be away from them.”
It’s rare that we as adults guide young people through the process of ending an experience gracefully, of encouraging them to express their mixed emotions and extracting the takeaways. Even if they still feel the tendency to pick fights as an experience ends, they’ll be aware of why they’re doing it and be able to channel that energy in constructive ways.