I Will Breathe in a Moment...

"All Hail the Heartbreaker," The Spill Canvas

Tomorrow is the last day of school. It's hard to believe, seeing as how I can so vividly remember the nervous excitement I felt on the first day. This year has been the perfect mixture of rewarding and challenging, trying and fulfilling. My students are inquisitive, bright, sarcastic, thoughtful, respectful, limit-pushing, impatient, funny, motivated, and...exactly what I hoped for. There is never a single dull moment in the classroom; I certainly could never anticipate what to expect on any given morning. I found out I was teaching high school a mere week and a half before the school year began, and in all honesty I didn't know what to expect. As a rule, teenagers carry the banner stereotype of being impulsive, angry, defiant, and abrasive. My classes, as a whole, completely obliterated these labels.

Over the course of the year, I have taught grammar, vocabulary, literary terms, The Crucible, Transcendentalism, American Gothic, Lord of the Flies, more grammar, Antigone, thesis statements, persuasive writing, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Great Gatsby, lit. circles, embedded quotes, human rights, The Catcher in the Rye, controversial research papers, MORE grammar, and more. Realistically, I know that my juniors will not remember what school Holden Caulfield was kicked out of. My sophomores won't remember what Maya Angelou's brother's name was, or what year Angelou was born. It's my hope that they will remember, however, that English and learning can actually be fun, that academic environments can be flexible, laid-back, AND effective, and that treating others with respect is the key to "making it" in the real world.

I bought a yearbook, and over the course of the week the kids have been signing it. Their comments are inspiring and make me proud of the countless hours of grading, lesson planning, worrying, and hard work I've put in over the course of the year. Tomorrow, after class, I will take the posters off my wall, turn in my grades, and go to graduation.


And Friday, I will sleep in and REVEL in the beginnings of a hard-earned summer.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

-Longfellow, "The Day is Done"