Reflecting on Students

Most people find December to be a time of reflection and goal setting for the new year.  For teachers, however, this is the time of year for reflection.  Our "years" don't go from January to December.  They go from June to May.  As graduation approaches, we start looking back on the year and looking foward to the next.

My school does something very special this time of year.  We hold a dinner to honor our seniors before they graduate.  This is where the normal awards are presented and valedictorian and salutatorian are announced, but there is something that makes it unapologetically GRACE.  Every senior has a short speech given about them in front of their parents by one of their teachers.  Teachers choose which students they want to speak about, and there are fights over some of them.  We don't talk about their academic or athletic performance; we talk about their character.  We talk about what we respect in each student.  I have had the opportunity to speak at every senior dinner GRACE has ever had, and it is my favorite night of the year.  I like it even more than graduation.  This is also the time of year when I get requests from my juniors for recommendation letters to be used with their college applications.  There was a time when our school was so small that I wrote letters for every student.  Now, I typically get requests from only a few, but I really enjoy writing them.

I think what I love about both of those things is that they make me sit and really think about the student and the history of our relationship.  I think about when I first met them.  For most of my students, that is probably seventh or eighth grade; there are others that I have been photographing for the yearbook since they were in kindergarten.  Thinking back on their goofier years is one of the best things about working at a school where I teach them multiple years.  I get to see the progress in every student.  No matter where a student is by their senior year, I have seen changes in them.  Writing their dinner speeches and their recommendation letters allows me to think about all those changes and how different they are now than when they were in 8th grade and how different they will be five years from now.  It gives me a great persepctive that I can pull out on the days when they aren't at their best.  I can think, "I may not like where they are today, but their bad day now is better than a normal day five years ago."  It's nice to reflect on their progress.