Another semester dwindles to a close, which means this weekend found me cuddled under a blanket on the couch grading papers with a cup of hot tea and Joey and Tao by my side. This is usually my favorite time of the semester as it signifies one of two things: I am happy to move forward and meet my next class of students (feel free to gather your own meaning), or I am filled with a bittersweet appreciation for the amazing group of students I am saying goodbye to.
If you’re not a teacher you may not understand just how deeply each class of students can impact your life – for better or worse. But if you are, you know that when you receive that roster at the start of each semester that you are looking at more than just names on paper; before you are the names of people with faces, and personalities, and pasts, and experiences. Some of the students will keep their distance and although you’ll learn their stories, they’ll do their best to remain nothing more than a name. Others will change your life. Regardless, each of them in their own right will frame your mindset, and yes, your mood, for the next four months.
This semester has been one of my most rewarding. Each of the students on that roster let me see them as more than just a name, and they gave me opportunities to walk into their experiences and really know who they are. Through their stories I was let into so many worlds – several I am familiar with; others I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for their stories. Some of their tales were so joyful they made me want to sing, others, so painful that the tears flowed from my eyes as I read them. (This would be cheesy if it weren’t so darn true.) From them I learned how to snowboard; what it feels like to live with Emetophobia (the fear of vomit); a secret family recipe for cinnamon buns; the experience of a US soldier at boot camp being trained to withstand the effects of a gas chamber; what it’s like to live without vision; what it’s like to be sent to a treatment facility after attempting your own life; what it’s like to grow up on a meat farm, and how to butcher livestock; ways to cope with a parent suffering from debilitating depression; how it feels to win sectionals for your district baseball team; how to endure the death of your father during your senior year of high school; the important life-saving steps a paramedic takes when he arrives at a scene; and how it felt for one student of divorced parents who wrote for pages about the heartbreaking experience of posing for a picture, first with his mother and then with his father, and recognizing that he’d never stand beside both of them in the same space for the rest of his existence.
As I read through the final stack of papers yesterday, I happened upon a note from one of my students. He was a shy student full of bright ideas and a fear of public speaking. He wrote “There’s nothing we as students can give you to repay you for giving us our sense of self.”
It amazed me to read these words, for I feel it is they who assist me in framing mine.
As I sit here this morning and calculate final grades, I am reminded of the awesome, albeit short-lived journey I have gone on with this particular group of students. And I feel gratitude for the roster that was given me in August, for it contained the names of students who made waking up and trekking to campus three mornings each week so happily bearable.
It amazed me to read these words, for I feel it is they who assist me in framing mine.
As I sit here this morning and calculate final grades, I am reminded of the awesome, albeit short-lived journey I have gone on with this particular group of students. And I feel gratitude for the roster that was given me in August, for it contained the names of students who made waking up and trekking to campus three mornings each week so happily bearable.
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