School's out for summer

For as long as I can remember, I've been bad at goodbyes. I can't manage to get through them without crying, and everything takes on this monumental significance and sense of poignancy.

The end of the school year is no different. I fall in the love with the students a little easier, the stupid things they say and do seem a little sweeter, and their earnest little faces during their final exam are pretty damn endearing.

This is not to say that they don't do things to make those goodbyes a little easier. I've never responded to so many stupid questions in my life as I did during the sophomores' final exam:

"I don't need a thesis statement for this second question, right?"

"Is this panel where these characters are talking a good example of silence?"

"Does spelling count?"

"Instead of writing an essay, can I just make a bullet point list?"

"Maybe you just want to cancel the test?"

And my personal favorite: "Can I come by after school to see my grade?"

Um, no.

But in all seriousness, here's what I love about the end of the school year: the sense of completion, of finality, of having completed something significant, profound, and important. Last night as I was walking in to graduation with one of our assitant principals, he turned to me and said, "I've done this a million times, but every time I still get a rush."

And he's right.

There really IS something to processing with colleagues in academic garb, with 500 some seniors who still have everything in front of them, with trumpets blaring, into a room so packed full of people their sense of pride is practically tangible.

The great thing about teaching high school, of course, is that as soon as you get swept away in these moments--swept away enough to ignore the 100 degree heat and the definitive sensation of sweat running down every part of your body--one of your students will pick you out of the crowd and bring you crashing back to earth by shouting at the top of his lungs:

"Hey Tholen! THOLEN! Did I frickin' PASS?!?"

It's the ups and downs, really, that make teaching so interesting. That's just how it is. You'll be in the middle of what you find to be the most enlightening discussion about the nature of our human existence as exhibited in this great text, and some kid will raise his hand and ask to "take a squirt."

Nice.

The bottom line, though, is that if you can find good friends to keep you laughing--to keep you sane, really--all you'll remember at the end of it all is the way that kid smiled when you assured him that yes, he did (amazingly) pass, the way they awkwardly hang around your classroom at the end of the day because they just want to talk, the way they shout your name in the hallway just to say hey, and the way they thank you sometimes on their way out of your classroom, and you'll think:

This is it. There is nothing I would rather do.