May

“School's out for summer…

No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher's
Dirty looks ”

By Alice Cooper

In an interview Alice Cooper was asked what his motivation was for writing the song “School's Out”. Cooper stated, “What's the greatest three minutes of your life? I think there's two times during the year when you feel like, ‘this is the greatest time of my life'. One is Christmas morning, when you're just getting ready to open the presents. The greed factor is right there. The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big."

At the end of each school year, this song always pops into my mind, and I have the strangest urge to break out my air-guitar and start singing the Alice Cooper classic. I'm not sure it's appropriate for the superintendent of schools to be jamming out in public to Alice Cooper, but it would be quite a scene.

Few moments in our lives are as exciting as the last minutes of the last day of school. That feeling of anticipation for the last day of school never dies down. I'm sure even someone like Kevin Dickson, who's been in school for an eternity, still feels that anticipation and joy of the last day of school. I remember as a teacher how moving it was to hear the busses honking their horns as they drove down the road or watching the graduates throw their hats into the air at the end of graduation. As a student the joy was having summer freedoms, moving on to another grade, and growing another year older. As a teacher the excitement is much more complicated—and it wasn't just that the trouble child was moving on to another grade. As a teacher there is a sense of joy in the knowledge that I changed children's lives over the course of the year. That feeling of accomplishment is powerful.

That joy also makes me think about what important and powerful jobs we have as educators. We often forget what a significant impact we have on children's lives and how they will grow up. Next to parents and family, teachers probably have the most significant influence on what kind of successes the children of our community experience. The daily interactions we have with children help develop their attitudes towards everything from other adults to work ethic. We need to understand and embrace our role in their lives. Every positive thing a teacher may have said to a student, every encouragement or extra hour that a teacher puts in to intervening with a student will pay off—even if the child didn't appear to get it or acknowledge the effort. Those positive experiences build up for children to draw on later in life. The abilities to face failure and find ways to overcome that failure are skills we teach children when we don't allow them to choose or settle for failure. We teach resiliency and determination when we constantly insist that they keep trying and we intervene when they don't understand.

As you jam out to Alice Cooper (or whatever grand end of year ritual you partake in) please recognize the profound impact you have had on children this year. Reflect on what attitudes and passions that each of your students may have taken away from your class. Hopefully those memories will be mostly positive.

Have a great summer.