I remember the day he got on that bus to go to kindergarten. I walked home from that bus stop with a baby on my hip and one tagging closely behind and called my husband in tears saying, “My heart just drove away on a yellow school bus.”
That year was hard. I can still see his face when he sat his little body on his big bed and told us, “I don’t like learning!” But, somehow, he did it; he learned. It was painful at times, but he learned. He learned how to hold a pencil and to make marks on a paper that are called letters that come together to form words that allow him to share his thoughts with other people. He learned how to tap his numbers so he could add them up and why math matters in the first place. He learned to work together on a team and to get along with kids with whom he may not naturally connect. He learned how to follow rules and when rules can be negotiated. He learned that it is not a sign of weakness or failure to ask for help. Everyday, he learned. And, at some point over the last 5 years of his elementary career, he stopped not liking learning and starting liking who he was and what he could do as he learned.
All that learning happened in the context of relationship with teachers who hung in there when even I was ready to put my head down on the desk in 7-up style and not look up again.
I’ve heard Evan give the quintessential kid answer.
“You’re in fifth grade? Who’s your teacher?”
“Mrs. Huxta”
“Do you like her?”
“Yeah, she’s nice.” (with a little smile and shoulder shrug)
Thank you for being nice, for investing in my little boy while I can still call him my little boy, for seeing he can do more than he thought he could do and for celebrating when he did, for giving him independence but allowing him to still be a child.
We’re about to enter something big come fall—a big building with more than one gym, with a cafeteria where kids can sit wherever they want, a world of locker combinations and midterms, and girls (!). The days of being asked “Who’s your teacher?” are over as he moves from classroom to classroom. Thank you for being the teacher to send him off, to prepare him for his first step out of boyhood. You’ve held his hand and, in so doing, have held my hand too.
Have a wonderful summer with your own children as you get reenergized to come back again in the fall to serve twenty or so other children and their families. I hope you know you are right where you should be.