Here we are the final run of the school year. The chunk of time between spring break and summer break. As a teacher there seems to be clear priorities. It’s a time of culmination in which concepts and ideas come together and synthesized through final projects. Sometimes these projects are research papers, presentations, and in my case concerts.
As we plan backwards from the last day of school, making sure that we carefully utilize the short amount of the time until the end of the year, it’s easy to forget that our students, aren’t always in the same headspace.
I come to the end of the school year, knowing that even though I have a group of new students next year, I am coming back to the same grade, and with familiar curriculum. As I think about my ninth year at this school, I feel comfortable knowing that most situations and challenges in the following school year, I have already dealt with, or can deal with feeling the support of my colleagues and my administration. While there is a lot of planning I need to do for next year, it’s work that I’ve done before in a space that is known.
My 8th graders are in a very different place. Next year they are going into high school. This is one the biggest transitions in teenage years. There are many unknowns, and fears that affect some of the 8th graders in the spring, others in the summer, but it hits them all eventually. It’s a lot to process. While I’m trying to get them focused and directed for their culminating performance, the students are worrying about the future, and a myriad of other issues that are intertwined and very difficult to pull apart (e.g. puberty, friendships, relationships with parents, identity development).
Sometimes this processing work, all of the feelings and challenges are expressed through clear questions, and expressions of emotions. Most of the time, it’s in ways that are less productive, like expression of apathy, changes in behavior, and sometimes, simply making bad choices.
As a teachers, while I’m committed to holding the line and never dropp the standard of how we work as a learning community until the very last second of the school year, there also needs to be ways that the students have space to express what they need to, and be who they need to be even if it’s counterproductive to the goals of a lesson.
My current plan to take care of my 8th graders is to create stability, accountability, and predictability for my 8th graders. I’m hoping that in the space of the band room, they can escape other worries and focus on the art of making music. This helped me through my teenage years, and maybe it can do the same for them.
My role at this school has me teaching 3rd grade, 5th grade, 6th grade and 8th grade. So this is the last year I get to teach these students. It’s almost incomprehensible how much these students have grown and changed since I first taught them in third grade. It’s really bittersweet letting them go, but it’s exciting. I get one more shot to bring them together musically, and help them bring meaning and beauty through music into their own lives.
I’m going to miss them. To deal with these feelings, I need to remind myself more than anything else to enjoy the time I have left with them, and hopefully in a small way this will help my 8th graders through this difficult time in their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment