Last Day of School Teaching

This is the end of the year.  Today was the last day of teaching at Harmony and after the graduation ceremony tomorrow where the students will be playing, they will be turning in their instruments.  The Success Academy Charter Schools is no longer going to bring in outside organizations to do after-school programs and so the students we have been teaching all year will no longer be playing.  I'm hoping a few are able to continue, and also hoping that the school system at least finds another way to help them stay in music.

It's a strange feeling to have the year be ending.  Each time I left the school I thought about how I could improve on the next time, or maybe how I could start the year over again.  Regardless of the decision, I hadn't been planning to return as a classroom teacher next year and yet somehow it seems even more final.   There are grand ideas and minute details that I dream of imparting to the students there, and yet my message has felt so muffled this year, so ineffective.  I think my arrows were not very straight and were blown off course by various winds, several that I can count for sure, several that I suspect were there but I may only come to know years from now.

I have learned so much from this experience, though.  I wish I had learned all there was to learn, but now it is done.  I am so grateful to the students for their patience (or at least as much as they could muster) and for those that have continued to love playing despite the frustrations of the classroom.  I have learned that respect is something that you practice, not earn.  That people and children are not only what they present to you, but are deeper within themselves and exist in the future and the past in myriad states.  It is not an option to quit and remaining open is the only way when it becomes difficult.  Attention getting devices and points are hallow but effective.

Tomorrow the scholars graduate from 4th grade and move on to other things.  They step into a world beyond my reach and I think that is a very good thing.  It is hard to say goodbye because I don't really feel like we ever said hello.  I shared so little of myself and was it because I forgot or because I couldn't find a way in such an environment?  But as I walk away, this is on my mind as another lesson.  To share more of myself with my students, in whatever way I can.