The Rookery

My first year teaching, my colleagues shook their heads in disbelief.  I decided to run Village straight through to the last day of school.  All of them had plunked their kids in front of videos for the last weeks of school so that they could pack (we had to be moved out of our classrooms by 6pm on the last day of school because of construction.)  I, on the other hand, refused to acknowledge that school might ever be ending.  I've learned a lot since then — I no longer leave giant piles of student stuff until the last day of school, for example, nor do I decide to make memory books on the last day of school.  But one thing I have continued to do is keep busy until the very last minute.  I want students to feel a pang of loss as we leave the classroom for the last time that year.  I want them hungry to come back.

We have a lot of traditions that bring our year to a bittersweet close.  Village, of course.  But we also have a lot of other "must dos" as the year wraps up.  Tomorrow, Simon will read Oh, The Places You'll Go to our fifth graders as the rest of the school looks on.  We'll receive our school journals and autograph them (the fifth graders are swamped by the youngers — evidence of the beloved figures they've become.)  On Thursday, Village mini-fair will bring the community together and on Friday, we'll have our carnival (will the Herons do their facial hair booth again?), class closing, and of course, the fifth graders will visit the secret section of the basement where they will sign the wall just like kids have done since the 1980s.  On Saturday (from 2-4), we'll play Pomp and Circumstance on our kazoos and then send each fifth grader off on his or her next adventure.

At Prairie Creek, we are a community school.  It takes a lot of work to create a community.  These traditions seem superfluous at first glance but they're crucial to maintaining the momentum into next September.  They help to make Prairie Creek a place where students feel they belong.  Of course, it would be a lot easier to call it a year in mid May and spend the rest of the time taking tape circles off of posters.  But we would lose so much.

Hopefully, your child is excited about summer, but that excitement is tempered by a sense that school is a special place, too.  Prairie Creek is a place he or she belongs and a place to come back to.