P.P.S. I guess this wasn’t that short after all. My bad. I guess I was trying to hang on to you for as long as possible.
Those were the last words I offered my students this year. They came at the end of a letter I gave my students yesterday after their state exam in Algebra 2.
The letter was motivated by my outright contempt of exam day. My students and I accomplished many wonderful things throughout the year. We learned lots of math, but math was only the vehicle to greater things. We laughed, bonded, and discovered new parts of ourselves. Given all that happened, the fact that the state exam is the last experience my students have with our class bothers me. I struggle with accepting it as the final chapter of our story. This happens every year at this time. It hurts.
Because of this, my pride gets the best of me at the end of the year. It’s why I resist the urge to cram for the exam on the last few days of class and instead elect to celebrate my students and our time together. It’s also why exam day puts me in a bitter mood and fills me with contempt. It keeps me from handing out peppermints and starbursts to my students as they settle in for the exam. My colleagues do it, and I feel like I should too. Yet I don’t. The goal of these small refreshments is to help students engage during their three-hour battle with the test, but it’s a gesture that supports a conclusion that I hope didn’t exist. I refuse to glorify an ending that fails mightily to provide meaning.
This year, instead of sulking on exam day, I decided to act. I didn’t want my dissatisfaction with the exam to take up more space than it already does. To do so would be disrespectful to all that my students and I built together. This year, New York State was not going to have the last word.
Thus, my letter. I waited for my students in the lobby of the school and handed it directly to them after they finished the exam. I placed each in an envelope bearing their name. Their letter was accompanied by a hug, some words of gratitude, and a smile.
In the letter, I asked them to not be too hard on themselves for anything on the exam that they didn’t know. As their leader, so many of their struggles on the exam are the result of my shortcomings throughout the year. I offered my apologies for not being more organized and efficient to help them be better prepared for today.
While the letter each student received was mostly the same, I used a mail merge to personalize them. My comments reflected a connection we developed during the year and the unique appreciation I have for each one of them. We took a class photo on the last day of class, and I included a 4″ x 6″ print of it in their envelopes.
I closed the letter by thanking them. I wasn’t always great, but they were. Most of us must go outside to see the stars. Not me. This year, I was lucky enough to teach among them each day right inside room 227. What a wonderful gift they gave me.
The letter was a symbolic gesture more than anything else, but it was significant. It served as a rewriting of the final chapter of the school year to give ownership of it back to me and my students. We got the last word.
bp
lazy 0ch0 