We have come to the end of another year of school. We are cleaning our classrooms, writing about the school year, playing outside, and eating ice cream. They are the same things we do every year, so why does it feel different each time?
The obvious answer is that I have different kids. I may have had 20 students last year and 20 this year, but WHOA. My class this year can handle independent work time, during which I allow them to chat quietly. Last year, I had a handful who could not keep their mouths shut and got loud and raucous, so I had to be careful. This year I could ask another teacher to keep one eye on my classroom while I ducked out to use the bathroom. Several years ago, I would have had a mosh pit on my hands when I came back.
Teaching is a weird job. I’ve covered that subject before here and here… and so many other times. We “only teach” for 3/4 of the calendar year, we fill our summer breaks with swimming and workshops and fishing and curriculum writing, and we are hailed as either heroes or demons by the general public. We are treated like celebrities when we are spotted in the wild by our students, and other adults often find it difficult to use our first names (I have had to talk several women out of calling me “Mrs. Loeffler” when we’re sitting at our kids’ baseball games).
With a few exceptions, we teach the same material every year, as long as we stay in the same grade level. This was my 10th year in 4th grade at my school, so I could just coast on what I’ve done for the previous 9 years, right? HAHAHAHAHA no. First of all, sometimes we failed at teaching something the previous year and need to try to approach it from a different angle. Sometimes the state changes standards — next year we have all new English Language Arts standards in Minnesota, so chances are I will spend part of my summer exploring the new standards and trying to figure out how to adjust how I instruct. We have gone through years with a prescribed curriculum to teach subjects, and years where we find our own resources and fill in what we can.
Did I mention that educational research is always shifting? At my school, we teachers just completed a two-year graduate course in The Science of Reading, which turned much of what I know about literacy instruction on its head. In other words, next year I’m going to completely change — I mean 100% — how I teach reading. My math scores were good this year, and my students loved math class, so I can probably keep the winning formula next year.
Except OH did I mention that instead of 20 students in my classroom next year, I will have 30?
*deep breath*
Yesterday, the graduating seniors walked the halls here at the elementary school. Dear Reader, this particular class was my absolute favorite. I grew so much as a teacher that year, because those students were all on board for wherever I chose to take them. They let me direct them in a play that they performed in front of a gym full of people! One of them threw his hands up in the middle of a fractions lesson and cried, “This is so fun!” One of them still calls me his favorite teacher.
Last year at this time, my daughter was graduating. I wrote a piece just for her (but of course I shared it with you, because I’m that girl). I cried when the seniors walked through our halls last year because I knew my kid was walking the halls too, just not at my school. So why were my eyes brimming yesterday?
We are told as teachers that we “make an impact on students’ lives.” I hope so, I really do. It isn’t generally the elementary teachers who get the shout outs from our kids — high school and college professors get to help them explore their worldviews and ways of thinking more than we do, and the experiences are fresher because they are older. But I know we make an impact. What I hope everyone realizes is that those students make an impact on us.
I’ve only had my own classroom for 13 years — 13 groups of my own students. I remember every single one of them. I remember my first class, and how we grew to love each other even though I had taken over halfway through the year for their teacher. My second class was at a charter school, and those students taught me so much about Somali culture while simultaneously challenging everything I knew about classroom management. I remember the class that had two different moms coming up to me at Open House to tell me that their kids had great anxiety about having me as a teacher because they knew me as a substitute. I remember the class that had me crying in a colleague’s office, unsure I could go back in the next day. I remember my poor COVID class, who had me for half a year before we had to say goodbye.
Hundreds of kids have been through the experience of having me as their leader, their clown, their taskmaster, their cheerleader. I can imagine that 4th grade sticks out for many of them, good or bad. I wish they could all know how much they’ve changed me, fundamentally, to my core. They shifted the way I look at discipline, at poverty, at mental health. They showed me how big and strong my heart is, and how easily it can break. They let me know — without knowing they were doing it — that I’m in the right place.
Thanks for reading.
Love, Susie
A fulfilling life is knowing you are in the right place, doing the right things! Awesome! Now enjoy your summer!
I’ve taught every single grade level from preschool to high school with a concentration in 2nd and 5th grade. Sometimes it made me sad that my best friend and beloved Grand Rapids high school teacher got hellos and hugs from her former students everywhere we went! She recently got a hug from a student we ran into on the streets of New Orleans! It took me a while to accept that those elementary kids who idolize you for 9 months will forget your name a few years later. But,in that place where we forget names, we retain the lessons we learned from each other about tolerance, acceptance and, finally, love. I knew by the age of 10 I was going to be a teacher and I never looked back. Thanks for being who and where you are. I LOVE TEACHERS!