Every spring, I become emotional, like many of us who work in secondary schools, as we prepare to say goodbye to the seniors who are leaving us soon. We know that eventually we will see them receive their diplomas, move the tassel on their mortarboards, and watch them walk away. We have been preparing for this time, but it is still a mixture of emotions when it finally occurs. We are proud and happy for them, but it is still a sad time for us.
Even though this is my first year in a school that is new to me, I am feeling just as sentimental as any other year I can recall. Perhaps this is because the Class of 2012 is a group of very kind and considerate individuals, although that can be said for many classes. Maybe it is because my first meeting with them was when we came together to honor Nick, their classmate who had committed suicide three days before the beginning of their senior year; as a result they have had to experience pain and sadness during their last year here at Bosque. Or perhaps it is due to their being so welcoming to me as their new Head of School in their final year. Whatever the reason, I am as sad to see this class graduate as I have been to watch any other class matriculate during my twenty-three years of working in schools.
I thought about the special nature of the relationship that develops between high school students and their teachers as I read a recent column by David Brooks about the rapidly growing field of online education. Brooks says in “The Campus Tsunami,” “A brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion.” As close as primary school students may become with their teachers, there is something different in the relationship between adolescents who are transitioning into young adulthood and those adults who spend all day with them at school.
During middle and high school, teens find out who they are by differentiating between themselves and others, including their parents. These are the years when a kind, sweet little girl who idolized her parents may become a sassy, moody stranger who barely gives them the time of day; or the loving, gregarious boy turns into a sullen, uncommunicative young man who barely mumbles as he disappears into his room for hours on end. Fortunately, we may not see this “acting out” at school. We observe young men and young women who are intellectual and personal works-in-progress; they grapple with ideas, they ask piercing questions, and they roar with laughter. If fostered by the culture of their school, they like to engage with adults in thoughtful conversations around meaningful issues, and they are genuinely curious about a wide variety of subjects and ideas.
On a daily basis, over the course of one year, and during the span of a high school career, the alteration in our students’ outer appearance is mirrored by the changes in their inner personality. We are shocked when one of them has grown six inches or changes his hair to a completely different color. In a similar manner, we are happily surprised when the shy student who never speaks up suddenly voices a sophisticated opinion unlike anything she has said before or the usually outspoken young man demonstrates a new willingness to listen to a classmate or changes a long and strongly held opinion. It is these moments of our students’ sudden epiphanies that excite us as teachers and enable us to care about our students even more than we already do.
What is all too often ignored is that the relationship with our students is symbiotic. What we give to them in terms of knowledge, skills, or new ways of thinking is returned to us one hundredfold in terms of joy, exuberance, and a sense of purpose for our lives. As a result, we all gain from this partnership, and when the students leave, we experience a sense of loss. Even though we know that there will be new students every year, it will never be the same since each person, and consequently every relationship, is different.
So, as the members of the Class of 2012 try on their robes and hats, as they finish their final assignments, and as they look forward to college, we wish them congratulations on the completion of their high school careers. We also thank them for making our lives better and richer for being a part of our community. Beyond what they have learned about math, science, history, or English, we hope they have learned the importance of relationships in their lives and they take this knowledge wherever they go and, in the process, enrich the lives of others as they have enriched ours.
