All Things Must Pass

And just like that, the 2016/2017 school year comes to a close. My room is clean, my keys are turned in, the chromebook cart is somewhere safe, all the emergency folders and inventory have been returned and attained, as have the necessary signatures. Grades, attendance–all there. So, it’s done.
A lot of my trolls and, I’m sure, my detractors, did not understand what I set out to do with this blog in August or September. They are the least of my concern, though they are an audience and have always been recognized as being there, waiting for something that didn’t come. Sorry to disappoint you.
I just wanted to write. I have an MFA in Fiction, something I received 20 years ago, and I wanted to see if there was still that discipline in me to produce writing every school day, and then some. I did. This is my 200th public post, and I only hid one because I didn’t like the misunderstandings it created, and I didn’t want to offend anyone.
It all ends the way it began–with writing. Today, I cleaned out everything and got to see some students (who still don’t get that they have graduated and that school is over). I also got to talk to teachers I normally don’t see because of the workday. I’m sure many teachers think I don’t like them, or care about what I think (for whatever reason), but I’ve written it more than once. For these last 185 days, we were teachers at North High, and if you went about your jobs and did the right things for kids, then you have my respect.
But I loved talking with Coral Taylor after school. She makes me laugh and she’s always doing what’s best for her dance program. I loved giving Jason Mun, our newcomer, a little bit of crap for messing up the dates on the end-of-the-year party. He’s been trying all year in class. He brought Louis Zamperini’s kid to speak at our school. I love messing with Jay Estabrook who, despite what the kids think, is TROUBLE, because he knows he can mess with me. But Jay also tells kids that books are cool, and he’s taking kids to the Amazon, among other things–so he CAN mess with me. I love seeing Anh Nguyen because we are kindred spirits. We’re old, we’ve worked and saved our money, we like to travel, and we see things at school in a similar way.
I wrote. Many things. I could have written more. And I know there’s this closure issue that makes everyone feel a certain way–oh, it’s the last post of the school year so it must mean something. Nope. To give certain things weight over other things is silly.
This blog will change into something else soon. Until it does, the quiet Beatle.https://youtu.be/ebtC3ORg9fU