http://www.edwize.org/the-end-of-school-breakup Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:46:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= http://www.edwize.org/the-end-of-school-breakup/comment-page-1#comment-62378 publish.nyc.indymedia.org | The End-of-School Breakup Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:21:10 +0000 http://edwize.org/the-end-of-school-breakup#comment-62378 <!--%kramer-ref-pre%-->[...] [Editor’s note: Miss is the pseudonym for a ninth-grade English teacher in the Bronx who finished her first year of teaching in June.]I’ll never get used to these endings. As expected, as inevitable, as — well, let’s face it, as longed for as they are, they always seem to blindside me when they finally arrive. How can I yearn for the end so deeply that I can sense the heaviness of fatigue waiting in my bones, and then when it arrives, feel so sappy and raw around the edges with nostalgia for the time before?Why is it that when I know another breakup is drawing near, every little thing feels so freighted with significance? I feel like I’ve got a Cornell box for a heart (one of Joseph Cornell’s quirky arrangements of symbolic objects) and everywhere I cast my eyes a talisman waits, vibrating with meaning. (Is it only English teachers who suffer this absurd malady?) There’s that pencil floating in the flotsam and jetsam of my desk on this sunny day here in late June, sharpened to a fine point and one inch tall. (That would go in the midpoint of the box, just slightly off center.) Then there are the ultra-vacant chairs, arranged at odd angles, relics of the energy they once contained. They narrate the story of the rush to escape the classroom. The books, open on the desks and face down, are paper birds with clipped wings, earthbound until another student’s eyes set them free. The fingerprints of 120 teenagers cover all the surfaces here in our room, filling the desks like leaves fill the bare branches of oaks in April – each leaf distinct, but part of a greater greenness. (more…) [...]<!--%kramer-ref-post%--> [...] [Editor’s note: Miss is the pseudonym for a ninth-grade English teacher in the Bronx who finished her first year of teaching in June.]I’ll never get used to these endings. As expected, as inevitable, as — well, let’s face it, as longed for as they are, they always seem to blindside me when they finally arrive. How can I yearn for the end so deeply that I can sense the heaviness of fatigue waiting in my bones, and then when it arrives, feel so sappy and raw around the edges with nostalgia for the time before?Why is it that when I know another breakup is drawing near, every little thing feels so freighted with significance? I feel like I’ve got a Cornell box for a heart (one of Joseph Cornell’s quirky arrangements of symbolic objects) and everywhere I cast my eyes a talisman waits, vibrating with meaning. (Is it only English teachers who suffer this absurd malady?) There’s that pencil floating in the flotsam and jetsam of my desk on this sunny day here in late June, sharpened to a fine point and one inch tall. (That would go in the midpoint of the box, just slightly off center.) Then there are the ultra-vacant chairs, arranged at odd angles, relics of the energy they once contained. They narrate the story of the rush to escape the classroom. The books, open on the desks and face down, are paper birds with clipped wings, earthbound until another student’s eyes set them free. The fingerprints of 120 teenagers cover all the surfaces here in our room, filling the desks like leaves fill the bare branches of oaks in April – each leaf distinct, but part of a greater greenness. (more…) [...]

]]> http://www.edwize.org/the-end-of-school-breakup/comment-page-1#comment-62326 susikelly623 Wed, 15 Aug 2007 03:20:23 +0000 http://edwize.org/the-end-of-school-breakup#comment-62326 There is something about the end of the year that always leaves you relieved that you will not have to pay attention to the clock and getting lessons planned and tests given and papers graded and reports cards done. And yet, there is always that time of reflection that leaves you remembering the good times and forgetting the bad. The faces come back to you and you know, I'll do this again, and again, and again. I love my job, with all its ups and downs, joys and sorrows, frustrations and rewards, I love my job. :) There is something about the end of the year that always leaves you relieved that you will not have to pay attention to the clock and getting lessons planned and tests given and papers graded and reports cards done. And yet, there is always that time of reflection that leaves you remembering the good times and forgetting the bad. The faces come back to you and you know, I’ll do this again, and again, and again. I love my job, with all its ups and downs, joys and sorrows, frustrations and rewards, I love my job.

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