Friday, June 16, 2006

Yearbook Days 

So little learning in these last days of school. Children on the cusp of summer fiddle in their seats for halfdays, end up outside in the hot sun of already summer, eating hot dogs, signing shirts.

To a teacher, each shirt signing is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen.

Summer, summer. Summer comes, like a storm on the horizon. 8th graders on their way up to the high school count the minutes until they once again sit, low men on the totem pole, on a new school wall.

Passed the yearbook out yesterday during lunch, I their intrepid advisor behind the table with the master list, standing behind the few remaining yearbook staff for one last time as they shoved the glossy blue hardcovers into four hundred hands or more. Never sold enough, but there was a surplus for this my first year; I'm already plotting ways to improve next year's process, next year's book. Maybe it's not the most important of my mandated tasks, but it's good to have something so concrete to show for the year.

I decided to only let 8th graders sign my book this year. Let the rising elders begin the year with incentive to buy one. They'll forget, as they will so many of our lessons. But somewhere, in the back of their blossoming minds, the world is crystallizing around these thousand truths. It is why we teach, after all. And such folly to demand more of them than this great task, this great rememberance, this great change.

posted by boyhowdy | 8:48 PM |

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