Wait Until I Leave

Just about everyone who has attended public school in America can picture the scene on the last half-day of school. It is a boisterous morning of locker clean outs, returning library books, and farewell activities. Students sometimes give me small gifts and cards. Some students hand me a note that they do not want me to read until after they leave. 

Even after all these years, I still open these wait-until-I-leave notes a little tentatively. I guess it's because I question myself. I wonder if I have served each student well-enough. It's an easy "yes" with the well-rounded average seventh grader who happily breezes through the months doing what he or she is supposed to be doing. For other students, it's a long school year, a very long year of coaxing, and nudging, and sometimes dragging them along through learning. There's the social-emotional part too, the daily grind of telling them they are beautiful, wonderful, unique human beings without using any of those words because the only thing these types of students may accept from you, at first, is "Hey." These are the kind of kids that tend to write the wait-until-I-leave notes.

I know I should not really be so concerned. I have yet to open a note with a likeness of myself drawn in marker riding a broom with a wart on my nose. No student has ever written anything such as "You are not a highly effective teacher. Your lessons lack robustness." And I have never found a frowny face with the message:  "I feel sad because I do not meet standards. You stink. " Still, there's something about this mysterious parting that puts me a little on edge.

Maybe it's because these notes so shrouded in mystery feel a little dark and subdued on a day that is frivolous and bright. I remember as a kid loving the big clean-up, the good byes, and chanting as we left school: "No more pencils. No more books. No more teachers' dirty looks!" and racing out into the bright June sunshine into what felt like an infinite summer. I don't remember ever feeling compelled to hand a secret note to a teacher.

For the most part, my students did evacuate school this year with a healthy burst of joy, leaving a trail of papers on the floor that had all been carefully graded and noted with thoughtful comments (Why, oh why did I bother?) In their exuberance to evacuate, they also left water bottles, jackets, hoodies, single socks and a variety of objects that were fired in the kiln in art class. They whooped, waved, and hugged their way through the halls, down the stairwells, and into the big yellow buses.  Teachers at our school line up along the sidewalk and wave them away and then we all stumble back inside to tidy up the aftermath before we whoop off to our own summer.

I like to take my time with the aftermath, to be in my room alone for a bit as I purge old posters, peel away the bulletin boards, and toss out any piece of the room that just seems weary.  It's a shedding of the old year. It needs to go. The students that came through the room during the year will never come through the room again and I will never be the same teacher again. They change so rapidly from September to June and they change me, I hope for the better.

When I do finally sit down to open the wait-until-I-leave notes, I know that just about anything, of course, could be found inside. In past years, I've found long, heartfelt letters about how seventh grade will never, ever be forgotten. I've also had a few notes from students who were not looking forward to summer due to a variety of difficulties with home life. The best notes are the simple thank yous from students I did not think I reached. The note pictured above is this year's favorite.