On Our Way

 The load out. 

That's what's left. 

Each year at this time, teachers roam around their rooms, looking for those bits and pieces of personal effect that they cannot live without for the two months during which they will be away. The boombox. The bag of candy that has been in a drawer since who knows when. The books that will be set on a desk somewhere at home with the full and sincere intent of being reviewed over the summer. Then there are those things that go immediately into the landfill. Toys that have been left or forgotten after they were confiscated "until the end of the day." Probably that half bag of candy. 

And the paper. All that paper that has been collected and collecting and spawning more paper until there are very few cupboards or closets that have not been stuffed full.

But not this year. So very much of the business of educating has taken place over Al Gore's Internet and lodged somewhere in the cloud that those stacks and reams of recycling never had a chance to get wedged into a filing cabinet, much less stuffed into student desks. That ritual of having students empty their desks of workbooks, broken crayons and forgotten bags of Cheetos did not have to take place. 

Not this year. 

Kids wont' be struggling home with backpacks and paper bags filled with a year's worth of worksheets that may or may not have been finished. Teachers will not be saddled with the ugly chore of pawing out the remains of their students' efforts. All of that took place somewhere in the ether.

Which is fine. Because it makes complete sense that there will be now written record of the events of this past year. There will be some accounting, whether it is merely attendance of the series of online assessments that pushed through the void and into their scholastic endeavors. 

Next year will be full of reckoning. All of those fifth graders who need a little boost to catch up to where they left off in fourth. The third graders who need a little leg up after missing vast chunks of what should have been their second grade year. 

But for now, we're closing up shop. Next year is just over the rise.