Every year at the end of the year, I get this feeling. This glowing feeling. This feeling that this year was special, this class was special. I think of each of my students’ smiling faces and reminisce over their growth this year and all of the sweet moments we shared. My heart swells with this overwhelming feeling of love and the magic of learning; cheesy, I know.
And then there is this sense of dread which follows. How will I ever be able to recreate this feeling next year? How will I make sure that next year’s class is just as special as this one? I imagine it must be similar to the feeling a musician or artist has after a great big, chart-smashing hit. How do I make sure it happens again?
One of the things that made this year stand out to me, aside from the fact it was my first in fifth grade, was that somehow my class grew a relationship with our night custodian, Patti Nelson. I don’t know exactly how it began...and that is part of the beauty of it. I have no idea if it was an idea that came from a class conversation, a comment I made, or a suggestion from one of the students.
But it began. Students began writing notes to our night custodian who cleans our room. Nice notes. On their desks in whiteboard marker to make sure she would see them when she wiped down the desks each night. Notes of appreciation for what she does to care for our classroom, and therefore, each of us. These notes acknowledged that without her contribution, we would not be able to be at our best each and every day.
No one has ever stepped forward to claim responsibility for this beautiful development. No one has marked this territory, taking it from the rest of us. No; we just all participated. How lovely! In some scenarios, people are disappointed to receive the participation ribbon, but in this case (and I would argue more often in life) participation is so important. Instead of ignoring anything happens in our classroom when we aren’t actually there, the students thought about it and realized that we are all participating in this community to make it a success. Why not recognize the participation of someone who does the unsavory task of cleaning up after us?
And then, even better, let’s honor her role by trying to do our part in our jobs to make her job less unsavory. Let’s be sure we clean up after ourselves; if we see a scrap of paper on the floor, even if it isn’t ours, we pick it up and recycle it.
Wait, it can get even better! Let’s invite Mrs. Nelson to come and celebrate with us at our Poetry Slam. And, when she can’t make it, because she is working hard during the night cleaning our classroom so she isn’t awake in the morning when we are going to share our poetry, let’s all put our poetry out at the end of the day so she can still be with us even if she isn’t with us. Mrs. Nelson wouldn’t be with us at our Poetry Slam, but she wrote the class a poem about how much she enjoyed reading theirs. She is just as much a part of our classroom as is each of us.
At the end of the day when the class is sharing compliments, they are simultaneously making notes and pictures of appreciation on their desks. Mrs. Nelson responds to their notes, makes pictures of hedgehogs for the class, leaves stickers for each student, creates Valentine goody-bags for each member of the class. It has been a steady and pleasant rhythm throughout our days in fifth grade this year.
But the students have never met Mrs. Nelson. And she has never met them.
Until next week, when Mrs. Nelson is going to prepare lunch for the class and serve them to show them how much she loves them and appreciates being appreciated. To say that I am touched by this is insufficient, but it’s probably the best way to put it without blubbering.
This class is special. I am proud of their hard work and the growth they’ve made academically. I am even more proud of how they have grown as citizens of our community. I look forward to hearing about all of their future successes, and I hope they aren’t all about the grade they made on the test or the award they won in a competition. I look forward to hearing about how their participation made a difference in another person’s life and in the community.
