Closing

 Over the weekend, the world experienced a lot of needless death. 

But none of them hit as close to home as Joe Lynch. 

Joe was the fifth grade teacher at my school. I worked with him for nearly twenty years. He came to us after teaching in middle school and took up residence in a third grade portable. Eventually he moved inside, downstairs to the classroom where I once taught fourth grade. There he held down the fort and prepared our students for the scary realities of middle school. 

He was uniquely prepared for this position, having been once upon a time a student at Horace Mann Elementary. He had returned to his alma mater to help kids find their way from his old neighborhood to that next plateau. He was that port for pre-teens in the storm of approaching adolescence. 

In troubled times, he was a reassuring voice. Our Principal remembers her first year, walking through the hallways after school with a head full of the worries every new adminstrator has, and Joe would be the one to meet her with this assurance: "Everything's going to be alright."

For years, he was exactly right. Over the past year we have made gains and shifted our focus away from simply managing to academic growth. Joe helped lead that charge. 

He also watched his own son prepare to leave for college, a process the two of us reflected on as my wife and I became empty-nesters as well. 

Now that fifth grade nest is empty. We will have a generation of students, many of them who have gone on to become parents of students, some of whom are now without their fifth grade teacher. To say that this will be a shock is an understatement as large as the loss we all will now have to bear. 

We will feel his absence, but we will always be grateful for his presence. We will share our grief with his wife and his son as we all begin to find our way into that uncertain future, middle school and beyond. 

Joseph Lynch stomped on the Terra. He made my job easier and the lives of countless families better for his commitment. He will be missed.