At the school where I teach, we have an annual tradition, spanning five years now, in which we have the senior class write a "Last Lecture" about their time at the school. Because I teach at a charter school that serves kids from 7th through 12th grade, some of the students who speak have spent a third of their lives in those hallways. They've accumulated a lot of experiences, taken a lot of classes, and heard me a lot, bellowing about uniform violations in those selfsame hallways. The lecture gives them a chance to reflect not only on those times, but the other tendons, fibers, and connective tissues that have built them into the young men and women they are on the cusp of becoming.
This time of year is always enjoyable for me. While it can be stressful to finish all of the administrivia of being a teacher (which, I am quick to point out, is not so much as the administration has to do), this is one of my favorite times of the year. Emotionally, I've put my most important lessons into the seedbed of my current crop of students--how to live, how to be moral, how to stand for something, how to find happiness, how to recognize people as people--and can enjoy their personalities as we finish the last flashes of history in the post-World War II years. Physically, I'm always exhausted (especially this weekend, as I'm overcoming a rough sore throat and fever), but I'm feeling optimistic about what I get to do next: Summer time.
There's also the joy of commencement. It's really one of my favorite things I do, and one of the reasons I love teaching high school. There's a satisfaction in seeing so many of the students who have passed through my class reach this culmination of their young lives. And the Last Lecture is essentially what commencement would be were the students to have free rein.
This year, I had the opportunity to judge the different lectures. In order to put a bit of pressure on them, we turned it into a competition, complete with cash prizes to the speech that is judged to be the best. To my surprise, the speech that wasn't as polished, funny, or as well thought out--but the one that was emotionally most expansive and applicable--was the winner. In the speech, the student (whom I have taught in creative writing classes, but never anything too profound or exciting) talked about how judgmental and foolish he thought everyone was, only to realize that he was the one being judgmental and foolish.
This kind of self-reflection and growth is a significant thing. I don't know how often I was told to look in the mirror and think of what I'd done. How often do we stop to look back? In other words, how are we drafting the Last Lecture that our lives will ultimately speak of us?
Part of my reason for writing these essays is because I want to put the imperfection of my thinking out. Some of it is to be a model. As a teacher, I recognize the power of modeling what I want to see, of being "not a hearer of the word," as it were, but a doer, too. I read the books, I complete many of the assignments. And I encourage students to speak up and speak out and think for themselves in my class. These essays provide a similar format, but one that is less on the transiency of a conversation and more of the potential immortality of the internet.
Another reason for writing these essays is that I can consider them all the rough draft of whatever my Last Lecture may eventually be. The truly important difference between what my students did today and what each of us is doing every day has to be the fact that they are aware of their commencement. Graduation is a couple weeks away, the date looming larger and larger in the seniors' minds. But our own departure from the Mortal Halls of Living and Learning is much more abrupt.
I mentioned to my ten-year-old today that, were we to live in a different time, I would already be at the end of my life, being as I am thirty-four. The average age has never been as old as we enjoy now (unless one goes along with biblical chronology, I guess), and yet people die from all sorts of things. What is it, then, that I want to leave behind? Well, on one level, I want to leave a Steve-shaped hole in the world, an indelible impression that somehow reverberates because of the chords I struck. I don't know if I desire the immortality that John Milton craved, but I wish to make a difference, a mark that says, "I was here." Writing does that for me. Even if it isn't true that anyone will read my words again, that I have done my part to get them out there is a satisfaction to me.
That, of course, raises one last question: What are you saying in your Last Lecture?
This time of year is always enjoyable for me. While it can be stressful to finish all of the administrivia of being a teacher (which, I am quick to point out, is not so much as the administration has to do), this is one of my favorite times of the year. Emotionally, I've put my most important lessons into the seedbed of my current crop of students--how to live, how to be moral, how to stand for something, how to find happiness, how to recognize people as people--and can enjoy their personalities as we finish the last flashes of history in the post-World War II years. Physically, I'm always exhausted (especially this weekend, as I'm overcoming a rough sore throat and fever), but I'm feeling optimistic about what I get to do next: Summer time.
There's also the joy of commencement. It's really one of my favorite things I do, and one of the reasons I love teaching high school. There's a satisfaction in seeing so many of the students who have passed through my class reach this culmination of their young lives. And the Last Lecture is essentially what commencement would be were the students to have free rein.
This year, I had the opportunity to judge the different lectures. In order to put a bit of pressure on them, we turned it into a competition, complete with cash prizes to the speech that is judged to be the best. To my surprise, the speech that wasn't as polished, funny, or as well thought out--but the one that was emotionally most expansive and applicable--was the winner. In the speech, the student (whom I have taught in creative writing classes, but never anything too profound or exciting) talked about how judgmental and foolish he thought everyone was, only to realize that he was the one being judgmental and foolish.
This kind of self-reflection and growth is a significant thing. I don't know how often I was told to look in the mirror and think of what I'd done. How often do we stop to look back? In other words, how are we drafting the Last Lecture that our lives will ultimately speak of us?
Part of my reason for writing these essays is because I want to put the imperfection of my thinking out. Some of it is to be a model. As a teacher, I recognize the power of modeling what I want to see, of being "not a hearer of the word," as it were, but a doer, too. I read the books, I complete many of the assignments. And I encourage students to speak up and speak out and think for themselves in my class. These essays provide a similar format, but one that is less on the transiency of a conversation and more of the potential immortality of the internet.
Another reason for writing these essays is that I can consider them all the rough draft of whatever my Last Lecture may eventually be. The truly important difference between what my students did today and what each of us is doing every day has to be the fact that they are aware of their commencement. Graduation is a couple weeks away, the date looming larger and larger in the seniors' minds. But our own departure from the Mortal Halls of Living and Learning is much more abrupt.
I mentioned to my ten-year-old today that, were we to live in a different time, I would already be at the end of my life, being as I am thirty-four. The average age has never been as old as we enjoy now (unless one goes along with biblical chronology, I guess), and yet people die from all sorts of things. What is it, then, that I want to leave behind? Well, on one level, I want to leave a Steve-shaped hole in the world, an indelible impression that somehow reverberates because of the chords I struck. I don't know if I desire the immortality that John Milton craved, but I wish to make a difference, a mark that says, "I was here." Writing does that for me. Even if it isn't true that anyone will read my words again, that I have done my part to get them out there is a satisfaction to me.
That, of course, raises one last question: What are you saying in your Last Lecture?