May Musings

Yesterday as I rapidly pushed Isaac along Main Street on our morning walk, a thought struck me. This is the first May in 24 years in which I am not completing a school year of some sort. I love May because it signifies the approaching summer and contains such an important holiday -- "The Last Day of School." Who doesn't love the last day of school? As an elementary student, the last day of school meant just showing up to pick up the report card and then going with my mom, brothers, and our close friends for a celebratory doughnut. As a high school student, the last day of school meant pulling everything out of your locker and leaving piles of paper, dried-up pens, and abandoned Trapper Keepers for the janitor to sweep up later (a dreadful event now that I look back on it as a responsible adult). As a college and graduate student, the last day of school meant an end to Finals Week, late night runs to Whattaburger for Taquitos, and the famous ACU Midnight Breakfast (in which I drug my roommates and close friends to every semester in hopes of winning a coveted door prize. I never won. Tobe won once and gave his prize to me, but it just wasn't the same). Finally, as a teacher, the last day of school meant frantically tying up lose ends, packing supplies away for the summer, and blissfully knowing I did not have to think about certain students for two months.

The end of last May found me sitting in an empty classroom, starring at blank walls that once held beloved bulletin boards, crying. Yes, I was seven months pregnant at the time, which could explain the crying. I was thrilled to be moving on from "teacher" to "Mommy", but it took about a half-hour of sitting and remembering and crying before I could leave that room and close the heavy oak door for good. I had devoted only four years of my life to that classroom, not many in "teaching world," but pieces of me were in those four walls, the empty chairs, the blank white board. I taught a special education behavior modification class for students k-5. Some of my students I taught all four years and together we had trudged through some pretty yucky days and had seen some remarkable improvements on other days. Holidays, birthdays, lost teeth, and "graduations" were all celebrated in that room with our tiny class of six or seven (one year 11, which I sometimes like to forget). Some of these students were almost babies when I first started teaching them and would want to curl up in my lap when sad or frustrated. Now those same kids are almost as tall as me and have moved on from wanting to read "The Bernstein Bears" to reading Harry Potter. One of these students took his own life back in the fall after carrying around adult-sized problems on tiny kid-sized shoulders for too long. We were a Hodge-podge family of sorts.

Do I miss my class right now? Perhaps just a tiny bit, especially knowing that due to things that happened this school year the class has now disbanded. Some students were fortunate to get into other behavior mod. classes at other schools while others are struggling to make it in regular education classrooms. Would I trade the opportunity I have right now to be a full-time Mommy to sweet Isaac---not for a million dollars. I prefer listening to his sweet babbles over the televised morning announcements and would rather hear him cry than a fourth grader. Will I return someday to the special education world in some fashion--most likely. To those of you readers who are experiencing a "Last Day of School" soon, I wish you the best of luck. Enjoy that time of excitement and anticipation of summer.

Pictures from one of the last days of school. The lower one is fuzzy on purpose to make the students' faces unrecognizable, thus preventing any potential law suits!