The Ebb and Flow Once Again
This is a story about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air — until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
“My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what’s going to happen to me!”
Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, “Why do you look so sad?”
The first wave says, “You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible? “
The second wave says, “No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.”
“Part of the ocean,” he says. “Part of the ocean.”
— Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
September evokes all sorts of emotions in teachers. The emotional void left in a teacher’s heart is never felt more strongly than at the beginning of the following school year. People assume that the last day of the school year is the hardest on teachers: watching their students leave for the last time, saying goodbye to those little faces they greeted all year. Truly, the last day of school can be tough, but the hole left by my former students didn’t become a glaring reality until the day after Labor Day. Looking out into a sea of unfamiliar faces and personalities, the comfortable familiarity of the previous year was replaced with something that felt foreign. September was when I missed my former students the most because I felt the loss of their absence.
But each fall while I was missing my previous students, I eagerly greeted a new school year for the endless possibilities and challenges it presented. Getting to really know my new students (and families) and forming a new classroom family took time and patience. Over days and weeks, we learned about each other, our likes and dislikes, our hobbies, habits, and quirks, but when that sense of comfort and familiarity arrived, it was exhilarating. Just like last year and the year before, a new little troop had formed. The faces changed, but the comforting sense of closeness was back.
Gratefully, at All Seasons, we are gifted with the opportunity to get to know our students and their families for more than one short school year. While we miss our students when they move onto kindergarten, it is heartening to welcome other children who are returning for their second or third year and to witness their newfound leadership. Last year’s toddlers and young preschoolers are ready to step into a new role with their peers, confidently guiding younger and less experienced children in the life of our school community. Our teachers burst with pride watching returning students take a younger hand in the hallways upstairs, lead the charge into the woods, or help their junior classmates with tricky outdoor gear. The trepidation in our new students fades into the glee of greeting friends each morning and ambitious plans to build a fort in the woods or cook a new batch of playdough with a classroom grandma.
Once an educator, always an educator. Even teachers who have been retired for years consider “a year” to be September through August, not January through December. Eventually we come to understand that our conflicting feelings will exist simultaneously. We know deep down that September is not a hard beginning, and May is not a hard ending; they are part of the continuous ebb and flow of the life of our school.
