Closing Time

Life's hall of darkness
Reveals light as my mind opens
Insight awaits me still

-A haiku from Period Five

The floors of Room 120 no longer gleam. There is a patch of red soda that someone spilled during yesterday's party, while we ate junk food and watched She's the Man and felt brilliant as we recognized the names and places from Twelfth Night, which we finished reading last week. "This is one of my favorite ways to feel smart," I told them. "When I am watching a movie and someone makes a reference to something else and I know what it's about. I feel so educated and brilliant. And you will, too. This isn't just a high school movie. Watch!"

Watch we did. On some level my speech was as much a justification to myself as a pep talk for them, giving me license play the "movie card" on the last day of school. But it was a cloudy, cold June day, and we were tired. So we ate chips and cookies and drank soda and laughed together at a ridiculous movie. Somewhere in there, cups of juice were dropped, crumbs fell, and rubber dirt from the soccer feild got stuck in the sugary puddles. The light coming in through the window now, as I sweep the floor and listen to music, does not bounce up from tan linoleum, but pauses and lingers in the matte dirtiness. The year has taken its toll on all of us, even the floor.

A student is now sitting across the classroom from me, the lone last student who made good on his promise to come in and finish his poetry project. I had no idea, when I welcomed him in, that he would be completing the entire thing now--it was supposed to be done and ready to hand in when he walked through the door--but he sits calmly and quietly writing poems in the corner, keeping me here.

My obligations are complete, you see. The grades were the first task on the list today, entered with weary and careful precision early in the morning. I am glad to be done with them, glad not to see, anymore, the triumphs and failures in which I feel complicit with my students.

Then the cleaning. Other than the floors, the classroom is as clean as it's been all year, the desks returned to their regimented rows and columns, the bulletin boards, whiteboards, chalkboards empty and waiting. I've hung the remains of student art on the wall, smiling to remember the ones who put it there, the students who will not be coming back to me in the fall. On my cleared-off desk sits a plant a student gave me yesterday. Its pink flowers perplexed me until the student reminded me that her hair had been that color for the majority of her time in class. Now I see her each moment my eyes rest on the electric pink petals.

The letters come last. They were the last true assignment my students completed for me, after their final presentations but before the mind-vacation of movie and junk-food Tuesday. I asked them to write me a letter about the year, sharing favorite memories, lessons learned, and advice for me as their teacher. There were endless complaints about these letters: "Why are you making us WORK today? School is OVER! How DARE you!" My responses grew less graceful as the day wore on:

Period One: "You need to write because school is not over until Tuesday."

Period Two: "It'll be good for you. Reflection, you know."

Period Three: "Seriously? It's just a little letter! Do a good job!"

Period Five: "Come on, folks. Settle down. We will not be watching a movie until you finish this."

Period Six: "I ask so little. A letter. That's it. Just write it. Stop being lame."

I am a little apprehensive as I begin to read, afraid that my irritability on the second-to-last day of school will have spilled into their impressions of the whole year.

The stories I read here! Of the nerves of the first day of school, of friendships lost and found, of after-school band practices and the comfort of a few oragami balloons and Christmas lights. They reference short stories we read so long ago that I've almost forgotten them. I see myself, again and again, reflected in their words, the young and quiet teacher in the loud and beautiful classroom. An odd and many-faced mirror.

"Whether it was loud or not you always found a way to make class fun. You managed to teach a lot of information to us through all of the talking and noise."

"I was very shy on the first day of school but now I'm free as a barn swallow."

"Sometimes in the morning I used to hear your voice say 'Don't be late' or 'You need to come to school more, your grade is bad.'"

To borrow one of my father's favorite metaphors, this has been a climbing year. There have been the seemingly endless uphill battles, when the summit is nowhere in sight and the trail is overgrown. The days when the broken lives and dreadful decisions of my students threatened any hopes for their future. There have been steep climbs, days when I left hoping that something miraculous (like an ice storm) would prevent my return the next morning. But I have emerged from the forest at unlikely places, privileged to see a little beauty--views of friendship or growth or courage. I have rested in cool and quiet forests, comforted by the funny and raucous community of lunch and the calm mornings with gentle, sleepy teenagers. Today, I've reached the pass. Some of the fog has lifted, briefly from where I've been, and I can peer dimly into the future, still golden and unknown.

And just like climbing, when I forget about the blisters, burns, and bent toes in the ecstacy of completion, I will be back. After a rest, of course. As one of my students writes to me, "I experienced a lot and want to continue this journey." I couldn't agree more.