What happens when it's time to start letting go

My instructional coach is psychic, and I love/hate her for that.

It's been a wicked intense year. Nothing but constant growth. (Do you remember being in elementary school and literally lying in bed at night with growing pains? Yeah. That. This year.) And apparently what you do when you've been growing and your students have been growing all year is... let go.

Let go.

Before you dare to launch into a certain twiddly winter fantasia melody, I don't mean let some ephemeral "it" go. There is nothing viscous, intangible about this loosening. It's letting students struggle with material. It's letting them miss the answers because they'll circle back around to it, they will, later in the discussion, or tomorrow, or next week. It's letting students be at different levels, having gotten there at different paces, and by different strengths and weaknesses. Not everyone's graphic organizer of the day will be beautiful. But some will. But some won't.

Let go.

It's realizing that my time in Los Angeles is voluntarily coming to a close. It's being okay with the waves of realization, rapidly increasing in tempo and strength, that come crashing in and pronounce that things will never be the same again. It's the cocky epiphany that not only is it okay things will never be like this again but also it's good. It's the growth, the growth right there— put your pointer finger on it and watch it disappear: it's so small even your little finger could cover it. It's a plucky little revelation. That teaching somewhere else is still teaching, and students somewhere else are still students, and growth somewhere else is still growth. Maybe even better growth, because it's the growth that's supposed to happen next.

Let go.

But back to my instructional coach. She knew just what my kids and me needed in these last six weeks of school. We needed to break the life-or-death embrace we'd been locked in for the better part of this year and take a step back and hold each other at arm's length and take a look at what lasting impressions had really been made. Could we see them, the impressions of each other's hearts and minds and experiences and values and obstinacies and deal breakers? Could we see them, like the weave of a knit throw pressed ardently against the face during a sticky afternoon nap, on each other's faces?

I have to let go that I don't see the impressions on some faces. Just like I have to let go that some students haven't left impressions on me either. It would be dishonest and patently marketeering to say that I love all my students. Lesson number one my first mentor teacher taught me.

Would I sacrifice my comfort and strength for any one of them? Yes. And I have.

But I have to let them go. The ones I love, the ones with whom we just couldn't get to that bond. They all have to go. They're growing up. And so am I.

The irony that this song has been going through my head recently is not lost.

Maybe I'll play it in the classroom tomorrow. In between 2pac and Biggie Smalls, you know.