The Last Day

I wasn’t at school yesterday. It was a half day and the whole day was “Fun Day,” full of amazing events and activities to celebrate a year of learning with all our kids. I wasn’t here because we had received devastating news about my husband’s cancer and I could not for the life of me get my game face on and be the happy teacher the kids needed me to be.

Today, after the second night of little to no sleep, I drug myself out of bed, determined to be energetic and enthusiastic for my students. These kids have gotten a raw deal this year with all my absences and my divided focus and I at least owed them a positive send off and conclusion to the year.

And that I did. We worked on memory books, signed autographs, talked about our favorite fourth grade events and activities and had a wonderful morning together. I was able, for a few short hours at least, to tuck cancer to the back of my mind and focus my energy on the students. Admittedly, it wasn’t perfect deception; the kids that push my buttons were at it again today in full force and I had to keep looking at the clock and reminding myself that soon they would be gone. There were also gifts and touching notes from students and their families, many acknowledging the challenges I’ve had this year outside of school, but I did what I could to stay positive, focus on the kindness and not get caught up in all the emotions of feeling less than what these kids bargained for, needed or deserved this year.

Just past noon, I hugged the kids one last time and sent them on their way, a bus ride the only obstacle left between them and summer vacation. With my colleagues, I walked out to the bus loop for our end of the year tradition of waving goodbye to the students as they rolled out of the lot.

But, as I waved goodbye, I found the tears rolling and the emotions came so fast and so suddenly that I had to retreat to the building and all but run to my classroom to privately sob. My tears and grief weren’t about the departure of the kids, it was a moment that caught me off guard as I stood there wondering what my world would be like a year from now and whether my husband would still be here on the last day next year.

The colleague who found me and rescued me from the tsunami of tears I was under is no stranger to such loss and pain. And as I went about my afternoon, trying to distract myself from those emotions, other colleagues stopped by and I realized how many of us on staff have experienced tremendous loss in our personal lives.

Ever since my husband’s diagnosis, I have struggled to keep all the emotions of my home life separated from my classroom. I have tried, in vain many times, to keep these students insulated from the realities of what I was dealing with. Many of these children, after all, have tragedies and traumas of their own and surely don’t need to bear the weight of any more. And in addition to the weight of my personal life, I have felt so very guilty for not being the fully-present, fully-engaged, all-in teacher that I have been in years past. My absences bother me more than anyone might know. Every time a sub left me a note about their less-than-stellar behavior, I felt personally responsible for not having been there or for being gone so much, or because they had so many different subs. Even as they hugged me goodbye and told me how much they loved me or how much they were going to miss me, or how much they enjoyed ELA this year, I felt a pang with every word, thinking, “If only they had me before…”

It is no wonder, then, that when they left, the emotions volcanoed to the surface, overflowing my ability to control them.

Earlier this year, when I voiced this struggle to a colleague, he reminded me that part of our job, like it or not, is to teach these students how to manage life. And that while we might hope a smooth sailing course for all of them, modeling the struggle and how to navigate the rollercoaster may prove as valuable as learning where to use a comma, in fact, it may be far more important.

Today, on my knees in my classroom, with gasping sobs, I was reminded of our humanity as teachers. I was reminded that who I am is an important piece of how I teach and that all of these experiences come together in this room, in this community with my students. As I go forward into a very uncertain future, I hope to remember this. I hope to allow myself the ability to share more than just the funny anecdotes from my life, but to allow my students to see how we live all of life.