Third Trimester

It's been a tough week in and around the halls of my school. The strain of fourth grade seems to have gotten to some of my kids, and it's not just my class. There are plenty of little problems becoming big problems all around our campus. Part of me wants to shrug my shoulders and play it off as just the early onset of Spring Fever. Another part of me wonders if I'm just not remembering how tough things get right around the time of our second trimester report card. But the voice that keeps winning out is the one that says it has something to do with a world that continues to wage war and refuse to raise taxes to pay for education.
I know that's an oversimplification, but it's the way it feels down here in the trenches. I understand that we have lived for way too long in a world that has let public education wander away from its expressed purpose and connection to the community that it serves. I know that I take no greater satisfaction than those moments when I have not only fired a synapse or two in the average fourth grader, but when I see those same kids walk out of my room and tell their friends or parents what they have just learned.
This year I have encountered more of the students from my past than I can remember in any year passed. I asked one of them how school was, to which she replied, "Mister Caven, I'm twenty." Sorry, my mistake. I might have pressed the issue by asking her what college she was attending, but her answer was enough for me. I understood her implication. She had come down to pick up her cousin who was leaving the after-school program early that day. I wondered if she would ever move away from her old neighborhood. It was nice to see her, but it made me wonder if I hadn't failed her somewhere along the line. While we waited for her cousin to come up to the office, she told me she still remembered how I taught her about typing with all ten fingers. So I had given her a skill after all. The time she spent with me had some value.
And so I head into the last few months of this school year with a mix of hope and resignation. I have no way of knowing what impact I will have on this group, but I look forward to a time where the world I am preparing children for feels more hopeful.