Moving Along

 Martin has been with us for seven years. At an elementary school, you may have already figured, you tend to max out at six. Martin managed that extra year by taking an extra trip through Kindergarten. This would be one of the mild successes I have encountered through my career for retention. We caught him early enough that he never had a chance to get radically bitter about having to catch up to that first group of classmates. He benefitted from another round of socialization and finding his place in a school setting. 

The school setting in which he found himself was the one at which I teach. The one where he has now spent most of his life. Martin will be commemorating this experience this week when he appears as our promotion speaker for his fifth grade class. He has been one of the kids who returned to in-person instruction this spring, and has made a point of connecting with me, telling me how much he's going to miss the old place and all the good times he's had.

And I was not going to spoil the moment by reminding him of the not-so-good times he had. Like when he got it into his head that PE was not his bag, exactly. To say that he was recalcitrant would be a stretch, mostly because it would suggest some sort of specific attitude generated from experience. Martin's was more of a practiced contrariness. Whatever I suggested, Martin had another idea. If I said it was time to start, he was done, and if I said it was time to go, he wanted to stay. This was a difficult period for both Martin and I. 

Happily, Martin was able to calibrate his attitude and happily somewhere in the middle of this past year, I caught wind of his comments in a classroom discussion about PE teachers. "Mister Caven is the best PE coach," he wrote to his classmates without the knowledge that all the comments he was putting into the chat were being saved within the application for teachers to read later. I took the flattery and chose not to embarrass Martin in front of his peers. 

Which is pretty much the path that I have taken when it comes to fifth grade boys who find themselves reflecting, on the advent of their promotion to middle school, about the way they spent their time in these hallowed halls. I don't have any idea how Martin will choose to share his thoughts about the past seven years. I don't expect I will get a shout out from the virtual stage we are preparing, but I won't be surprised either. I have been a consistent presence in his life, even if most of the other teachers who have taught him have moved on to other places and vocations. I've been here. I watched him grow and learn. There are still plenty of things for Martin to experience, as those who have made the leap to middle school will attest. 

But I hope he keeps his promise. The one about coming back to visit.