Skip to main content

The Last Day of School

Yesterday was the last day of school. It was bittersweet, as it tends to be from year to year. It's hard to believe that the group you've lived with for ten months will no longer be together come September, and at the same time you're ready for summer vacation to start.

The last few days of the school year are often hurried, leaving little time to enjoy each other and say farewell properly. Three other activities yesterday contributed to this hectic pace: our school's annual talent show, SmartBoard installations in various classrooms, and an ice cream party on the playground. In the middle of this craziness, we stopped and I addressed each child individually before everyone went their separate ways. After I finished reading my "the most important thing about..." paragraphs for each child one of my students walked over to his desk and started writing furiously. I assumed he was adding to a comic he had been working on during the week. Then, he came over and handed me the paper. It said, "the important thing about Señora Waingort is that she loves us."

This was a fitting end to an incredibly enriching year. This child's words will stay in my heart forever.

Comments

Allan said…
Hi,

Thanks for sharing that special moment. This reminds me of what Alfie Kohn says at the end of his article on Unconditional Teaching


Imagine that your students are invited to respond to a questionnaire several years after leaving the school. They’re asked to indicate whether they agree or disagree – and how strongly – with statements such as: “Even when I wasn’t proud of how I acted, even when I didn’t do the homework, even when I got low test scores or didn’t seem interested in what was being taught, I knew that [insert your name here] still cared about me.”

How would you like your students to answer that sort of question? How do you think they will answer it?

I also need to thank you for indirectly getting my blog counter going.
Unknown said…
Hi Allan,
Thanks for your comment. I know that the names of teachers that I could put in the blank are not necessarily the teachers that I feel "liked me" but definitely the ones that cared about me as a learner and did what they could to push me to become better than I was. Those are the teachers I appreciate and probably have at the back of my mind when I work with my own students.
Elisa

Popular posts from this blog

Partner Reading and Content, Too Routine (PRC2)

I'm a hoarder. There, I've said it. I try to deny that I'm a hoarder but it comes back to haunt me every time I move houses, or pack up my classroom at the end of the school year. I have old articles, lesson plans, handouts, folders brimming with teaching ideas, past issues of profesional journals. I hardly throw anything out though I've learned to be more selective over the years. My one rule of thumb, and I really try to stick to this, is that if I haven't used or referred to something in a year, then it's time to toss it into the recycle bin. One exception to this rule (you knew this was coming, didn't you?) is past issues of journals from professional organizations. However, with the ability to locate articles online through my professional memberships, even this exception is becoming less and less useful, which brings me to the topic of this blog post. I am currently reading a copy of The Reading Teacher from 2010. I've clipped a cou

The Reading Strategies Book - Chapter 12, Supporting Students’ Conversations – Speaking, Listening, and Deepening Comprehension

The strategy lessons highlighted in Chapter 12, Supporting Students’ Conversations – Speaking, Listening, and Deepening Comprehension, in The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo are critical to students’ engagement and comprehension, as well as their ability to write literary essays, or even book reviews, summaries and reflective pieces about books. If students aren’t able to talk about books in a way that is invigorating and joyful, they will be less likely to develop an interest in growing ideas for writing about books. In her introduction to this chapter, Jennifer Serravallo, reminds us that when conversations go well, children are inspired by what they read and are motivated to keep reading. However, when conversations fall flat, then kids get bored and tune out. How do we avoid this situation and teach kids to  have  focused conversations about books?  The answer is easy: teach kids  strategies to help them develop effective conversational skills .  As in

Are we listening?

A child sits alone with a ripped worksheet packet on his desk. He appears to be singing or subvocalizing something though no one hears him. Or, perhaps they're ignoring him. The teacher stands at the front of the room teaching on the SmartBoard. The children follow along in their worksheets. Except the child sitting alone. He is in his own world. No one engages him and he engages no one. My heart aches for this child. He is physically and emotionally removed from the class. I ask him why his paper is ripped. (It's not an accidental rip.) He says he did that on a different day. When he had been frustrated about the work. He tells me that he sometimes sits by himself because the work is too hard for him. He later tells me that he sits by himself because the teacher thinks he talks too much during the lesson.  He says he does that because he wants to find out about the "lives of the other children". My first impulse is to rescue him from the wrongheade