My hope for my students as they navigate this last full week and move into new spaces--

Life has a way of offering up correctives, even if they are the small, niggling sort. On top of all the good writerly surprises, and at the very end of a lovely, warm day filled with fun with Holly's new swing set and sunshine, the dishwasher got cranky again. And my recalcitrant phone got weird (maybe it's okay now?). Ah, the temblors of stupid little stuff, right? I won't let them rock my world, though-- the weather is gorgeous, and I have a full day of writing with old and new friends ahead. Yes, it's online, but hey, that's okay. That means I have full access to my bathroom and when we have a break or two, I can pop outside on the deck for fresh air and sunshine. No classroom walls to hem me in.

I'll be done for the day around 3pm, and I hope I have a good start on some new work. I'm itching to write stuff, new stuff, not incarnations or incantations of the old stuff. I want to get a little deeper into the world of words. I want to push the safe aside and jump into the deep end. We'll see how it goes. 

And this coming week is going to be a weird one at work-- it always is, the last few days before seniors graduate. They revert to 3rd grade behavior in a lot of ways. For all their bravado, they are still kids. They have little confidence in what they have learned, and now they face a whole new set of unwritten rules: adulting. Some will be fine, most will flounder a bit. I hope that they find dry land, whichever one they are. We've done what we could; these kids started high school online in a pandemic, they are facing a world that is inching toward a scary level of destruction, and they feel unprepared to cope-- and many do not have families that will safety-net them. I hope that they find meaningful work and build sustainable lives, with people in their individual circles who will be there for them. And I hope that they, too, feel that they can be there for others. The rest is just book-learning. 

For the younger ones who will still be in school until June 11, we'll finish up-- there's no more time to do/learn/teach anything new. My Brit Lit kids have been a real joy, and now they have two assignments to finish. I should be getting literary analyses of Hard Times tomorrow (cross your fingers), and then they will spend the rest of the week working on a final thematic paper, one that discusses an overarching theme or concern, and using at least three anchor texts to support what they are suggesting is important in the literature we've studied. Things like, what makes a good leader? Or, what role do women play in society? Or what can a contemporary reader learn about the connection between human beings and nature/their environment? 

Those are big ideas. And if they think deeply enough, and look into what we have chosen to study, they'll see I've been setting them up for this discussion/paper since day one. Otherwise, we've just had a merry romp through old books. And that is never my point. They've learned one thing (and they frequently parrot it back to me): the date changes, but people don't. 

I hope that they can see that literature holds a floodlight on that fact, and that we might just be able to see patterns of behavior that are uncannily familiar. If we can look to the past with a keen eye, we might be able to figure out the present, and make enough changes that the future is not so frightening.

Have a good day,

C