Friday thing(s) : graduation

A stage, some chairs, a photo, and a note

As I mentioned last week, it’s been almost a year since I left my teaching career. This weekend is graduation for the class of 2024 and I’ll be going to my school’s ceremony to watch the last students I taught walk across the stage for their diplomas. My principal¹ is graciously letting me come to the pre-ceremony prep time so I can visit and take pictures as the graduates put on their gowns and fix their hair & caps and sign each other’s yearbooks, and also clown around in the way only teenagers can when they’re trying to not think about the gravity of a situation. I get this; we all have to find some kind of socially acceptable + safe coping mechanism when things feel emotionally overwhelming. Every June, I used to make myself watch an intense Crying Movie² the night before graduation³ to purge all my restrained tears, so I wouldn’t start weeping during the ceremony. Last year I might have watched two movies as it was my last time attending as a teacher plus I was giving a speech; at least I was able to pass on the duty of graduate name-reading to other capable colleagues⁴ so I could sweat [and feel like crying] a little bit less.

When I started teaching at Hayes Freedom High School in 2007, I didn’t have a dedicated classroom for awhile so I used the auditorium stage. I found an old wooden rolling cart that had a sturdy shelf on top where I could prop a small whiteboard. I had to set up a couple of tables & a dozen or so chairs each morning then drag them all back to the wings after school, to keep the stage open for another school’s drama program. It was a meditative, joyful ritual for me though; I loved my job enough to engage in a little extra physical activity.

After our school moved to a new building, we couldn’t access the old stage for many years while it was being renovated. Two years ago, we were finally able to have our graduation in that auditorium again, on the same stage where I got to become a Renegade and where we held our first ceremony as an official high school⁵ in 2008. Besides reading names at graduation, my other task was to line up the chairs using that omnipresent Virgo trait: perfectionism. I have a feeling zero percent of the audience ever really cared about the level of precision I gave to this assignment but it made me feel satisfied while also keeping me too busy to feel weepy.

Back to our beginnings. (Just look at the alignment of those chairs…)

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Our principal started a tradition of having the Senior class make a tunnel for staff to run through just before everyone lines up to officially walk out for the ceremony. It starts out a little confusing for the students because they’re finally trying to switch into serious adult mode while there we are, the grown-ups, smiling wildly and kicking off our fancy shoes to go dashing under their arms, giving high fives. But soon enough they are cheering & shouting our names as we pass through.

Then we’re all suitably charged to go out and seize the day.

Me barefoot and actually sort of running, with the Class of 2013. Photo by our former counselor/my friend Hollie

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A truly astonishing & validating thing about being a teacher is sometimes hearing from a student in real time - not after they have gone out into the alarmingly harsh world of adult life - that they found something worth appreciating in my class. I would not have spent as many years as I did teaching if I didn’t believe I was doing an admirable job, but really making an impact on someone’s life is not something we can easily measure. Teenagers, despite what too many people want to believe, are sensitive & thoughtful a lot of the time though they don’t show that much, either because they honestly aren’t sure how to, or because they think we’re already aware of how they feel; we adults do tend to act like we know everything a lot of the time. So when one of those teens is given the opportunity to sign a teacher’s yearbook and decides to articulate something like this, well…I guess it is about time I schedule some crying before the big day.

I’m not even worried about spelling or punctuation errors; frankly, that’s on me.

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We shall not cease from exploration 
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

~ T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding from Four Quartets

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1. Also my friend, which is possibly the greatest boon in my adult life beyond husband & children.

2. Usually Terms of Endearment but The Hours and Inside Out also worked.

3. Yes, I needed to put icecubes on my eyes in the morning but at least I didn’t ruin everyone’s afternoon with my sobbing.

4. I don’t miss losing sleep for weeks from practicing to pronounce every student’s name properly, though afterward I was always hugely proud at having succeeded.

5. Hayes Freedom was originally an alternative program created by our principal + our Social Studies teacher, where students from the traditional high school in town would come to recover credit. Then a lot of kids (particularly siblings of previous students) wanted to spend all of their academic years with us so we were able to establish ourselves as an accredited high school.