The First of the Lasts: Retirement Inches Closer

So already, many of my twelfth-graders have their foreheads pressed up against college early-action/early-decision deadlines this week, so they have been engaged in epic amounts of crafting and revising, fretting and plodding in alternation.  Still, I think the pressure is easing a bit:  it's almost over.  For many of the students, the deadlines have been extended to sometime next week, due to problems with the Common Application web site.  My big fantasy right now is that come mid-December, through some snafu that crosses dysfunctional web sites, many twelfth graders across the US will discover that they now have their own health insurance, while thousands of health insurance applicants nationwide will discover that they've just been admitted to college.  Hmmm . . . .

It's been some weeks since I've written about  approaching retirement and the questions that it raises -- about next steps, time, and losses and gains.  But last week had a number of noteworthy "lasts"-- and suddenly I could see retirement standing in the wings getting ready to come onstage after I finished my scene.  I figure that in my education career, I've written no less than 650 letters of recommendation for aspiring college applicants.  But last Wednesday, I wrote the last one of them. I even enjoyed writing it because it was about a student who has so much to recommend him.  But still, I was glad it was my last -- and that I could retire my royal blue folder. 

Last Thursday night marked my last-ever evening of parent conferences.  Yes, I was okay with that.

I can get used to these two lasts.  But I had a more poignant last on Tuesday when my AP English Literature and Composition students went on our annual "War Memorials Field Trip."  We did this in preparation for our study of  Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."  My former Pilot School history-teacher colleague Betsy Grady and I conceived this field trip many years ago when we co-taught these poems in interdisciplinary units that contextualized them in their historical moments while asking if and how they resonated in the present. 

Betsy and I got the idea because not only is Cambridge Rindge and Latin School located within easy walking distance of several war memorials -- most notably on the Harvard campus and the Cambridge Common -- but it contains a memorial to the city of Cambridge's war dead within its own walls. Back in the 1990's, we wondered whether the kids actually ever looked at the inscribed names that they passed regularly while going to and from gym classes -- and if they did, we wondered how often. And while some students reported knowing that there were names and wars listed, most reported spending no time actually reading the walls. The degree to which we did and should pay attention has always been a more emotional discussion topic when students have had siblings or other family members who are or have been in the military and overseas on active duty.  Discussion of the "good guy we" has grown more complicated over the years as increasing numbers of our students come from Vietnam, Japan, and other countries which they remember, and to which they return regularly if not often to visit relatives "who remember."
 
Over the years, we learned to ask students to look in complete silence at the names, and to think about a number of questions.  What wars are represented here?  Does anybody here have your last name -- or a name like yours? Are you related to someone whose name is on the wall?  What do you think of the number of names here? Do you see any women's names here?  After some quiet observing, we've generally headed outside to start to talk about what we've seen, what's surprised us, and what we've been wondering.

Since I've started teaching AP, there have been some curricular changes that seem to have affected our perceptions of the memorials. Usually, we have headed off on our field trip when we've just finished Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One, which portrays armed and armored noblemen engaged in a conflict that yields significant casualties. And what we have encountered are memorials that outfit and equip soldiers who died in much later conflicts characterized by  technologically "advanced" ways to maim and kill --  the Civil War and World War I -- as if those soldiers had lived and died a few hundred years earlier and might have crossed swords with Henry IV himself. 

Furthermore, we have usually just read a Veterans' Day speech written by a college friend of mine in which he talks about what it has meant to him throughout his life to have been named for an uncle who is honored on both the Korean War and Medal of Honor plaques in Harvard's Memorial Church. So my students (here they are en route to Memorial Church -- I've been very careful both here and above to use only photographs that will not allow you to identify any of the students individually) have gotten to hear at least one answer to a question they've generally posed:  how would I feel if I personally knew -- or knew the family of -- someone who's up here on the wall?

It's a heavy day, but a great day, an unrushed opportunity that requires everyone to put aside at least for an hour the usual school routine augmented in intensity by the college application process. We've been very lucky that every year that I've led this trip, Memorial Church has been empty, so we've had the church to ourselves to explore in silence  -- unless, as was the case this year -- and the kids always love this -- the church organist is practicing some piece that dominates the whole church until it ends, leaving us to explore in its ringing absence. Even though our field trips have generally happened in late morning, the unworldliness of those moments has always reminded me of the first stanza of one of Emily Dickinson's poems:

               There's a certain Slant of light,
               Winter Afternoons --
               That oppresses, like the Heft,
               Of Cathedral Tunes --

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons –  That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15390#sthash.Hzl8BNvH.dpuf

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons –  That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –  - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15390#sthash.du3Y76XQ.dpuf

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons –  That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –  - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15390#sthash.du3Y76XQ.dpuf

Homework is always the same after this day -- to write a "War Memorials Freewrite" about anything or everything that's on your mind as result of today's field trip.  This has been one of my favorite assignments to read:  one experience, so many varied responses.  Regardless of the variation, however, the students have all chosen in their own ways to begin to wrestle with one of the questions that guides the unit: "How – and why -- do we love and mourn 'great' strangers whom we 'know' and admire?"

I will miss this day. And I don't know if there ever will be another War Memorials Field Trip at CRLS. 

I do know, however, that there will be more Hallowe'ens at CRLS, though today was my last "high school Hallowe'en."  I wore my special Hallowe'en scarf -- the one with the candy corn border; and when one of the new Bilingual/English Language Acquisition teachers -- she makes incredibly good chocolate chip cookies and is married to a very memorable former student of mine -- asked me about my jack-o-lantern pinkie ring, I made a snap decision:  "I'm going to give this ring to you after today.  This ring belongs in a school on Hallowe'en."  You can see the ring here sitting next to my computer mouse.  I love that ring, but it needs to be around lots of kids.  So today was the last time I wore this ring to school on Hallowe'en.  For some reason, that felt like a terrible but right loss.  I think there are going to be more of these.

There's still a lot to be done before it's over -- two more end-of-the-term's worth of papers, exams, and grades for sure. These are the seasons of the school year that make all teachers' lives about late nights, early mornings, online grade system anxieties, endless negotiations with students about "what they can still do and by when." The four "personal teaching stuff" file cabinets at the left represent all the folders and papers that I need to go through before my final exit:  a lot of mysterious content that I can probably toss with curiosity but little emotion, but also lots of old units and old courses that it took me years to develop.

There's one "last" that I'm working toward -- but it needs a process.  That's providing the monthly poetic reminder to the staff of CRLS, past and present, and to our colleagues and friends from elsewhere, that the first Friday of the new month is upon us, requiring us  to gather at Grafton Street, known in the old days as the Bow and Arrow Pub and the older days as Father's Six.  It's the bar that's featured in Good Will Hunting. 

This month's poem discusses the need for identifying a new First Friday poet, or several of them, relatively soon.  So I end this post with my poem -- and with gratitude to Shakespeare for Henry IV, Part One and  Macbeth -- and with a promise to report other lasts as they occur.

"When shall we . . . [all ] meet again?

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurly-burly's done,

When the battle's lost and won?"

Of course, the day aft Hallowe'en --

The usual place, at 3:15 --

When souls and saints are 'twixt and 'tween,

And Term I's end is clearly seen!

As light declines each day an ember,

We'll meet time next the First, November

In might right rites of Friday First --

Do not to good times be averse!

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Pint of ale, mug of grog,

Stein of beer, and glass of coke,

Join together, lass and bloke!!

But now my months but number three

'Tis time to cease this poetry

And hand this monthly happy chore

To colleagues who have some months more.

And I am sure that it is mete

These monthly bans for Grafton Street

Must stem from pen that writes at Rindge --

Upon this doth tradition hinge.

First Friday's bard must so well know

When staff feels joy and staff feels woe,

When grades are due, when MCAS roars,

When spirit sinks and spirit soars.

And I, alas, your longtime bard

Will not find it all that hard

To yield this monthly call to rhyme

To one or more in few months' time.

Perhaps a CRLS Bard Council

Will craft together verse whose bounce'll

Rouse us to our proud tradition,

Keep Grafton Street our monthly mission.

And in some shadow, perhaps lurks

A secret poet whose writing quirks

Will steer our First Fri steady ship

With generous heart and ready quip.

And while I'll write just two poems more,

I'll always pass through Grafton's door!