This piece is dedicated to Marti Young (thirty-three years) and Beth Osborne (twenty-four years), who retired today after tirelessly serving our students and staff with grace, and to teachers, assistants, administrators, office staff, custodians and anyone else who spent the past ten months on a school campus. I’m sharing my personal experience, but perhaps you will be encouraged, comforted or inspired knowing we are all connected by the challenge and adventure of creating safe spaces for students to learn and grow and pass those BIG tests. It’s not an easy world we live in. These kids bring more on their shoulders each day than their backpacks. The adults who meet them with smiles, affirmations and genuine care are valued, appreciated and even loved. You matter to these kids more than you know. I see you.

“Come in the room. Come in the room. COME INTO THE ROOM. Here’s what my third graders told me this week.” That’s the way 24-year-old teacher, Mr. Keldric Holmes begins his viral Instagram reels, followed by an onslaught of irritatingly endearing pen clicking. He then proceeds to read a list of hilarious, honest and sometimes heartbreaking insights his students have shared in class. https://www.instagram.com/reels/DTVsZsNDvYN/

Since August, I’ve been keeping my own list of things I’ve overheard on campus. I believe they pretty much sum up this school year and the microcosm of many campuses across our country. Things begin innocently enough, but the unicorns and rainbows quickly get overshadowed by some very harsh realities.

Overheard in the lunchroom on the first day of school: 

“How old are you?”

“Nine.”

“I’m nine!”

“I love cotton candy.”

“Me, too! Cotton candy is my favorite.”

A few days later, I hear a snippet of conversation between  two second graders walking to their bus:

Boy to Girl, “It’s because your serotonin and dopamine aren’t working right.”

Me: “Serotonin and dopamine? Those are big words.”

Girl: “I have ADHD. My mom told me not to tell anyone so they don’t make fun of me.”

Wanting some insight into the third grade repeaters I’ll be working with, I ask why THEY think they are in third grade for a second time. One student’s response kind of breaks me. “My dad died last year and I had a hard time focusing on school.”

September holds some real nuggets:

• “I…don’t…like…youuuuuuuuuuu!” An adorably angry kindergartener yell-cries into our principal’s face as he squats kid-level in the hallway.

“I don’t care,” our fearless leader calmly replies. “You are going to follow the rules.”

• A first grade boy looks at my hands and notes, “You have old fingers. How old are you? My grandma is fifty-two.”
• In Nurse’s office a small child peeks up from her paper and overshares without invitation, “I’m drawing a picture for my mommy. But, she’s not really my mommy. My real mom’s name is Rhonda. My little sister is one year old. She was born breathing. I was not breathing when I was born.”
• On my way to collect an intervention group, I smile as I pass Mrs. G’s door, knowing at some point in my career I’ve repeated the same words she’s saying to her students – “We are going to do silent reading. That means…READING SILENTLY!”

It’s STILL September, but things start to go downhill for some kiddos.

• “Guess what,” a first grade boy confides as I’m trying to get him to focus on sight words. “One of my kittens died one day. And I hated it. All of my kittens are my babies.”

And…

• “My cousin came to spend the night this weekend. That was the good part. The bad part was we were on the go-kart and I was driving and I flipped the go-kart and now my cousin has two broken arms.”
• A new student comments on his first FAST Reading test. “I got a ONE. I took until the end of the day. The passages were really long. It was hard for me.” 

October is enlightening:

• From a first grader: “Mrs. L. gives me a lot of work. That’s very stressful.” 
• “We missed you yesterday,” I say to a fourth grade boy.

“Yeah, my dad had an appointment at the Mayo Clinic. He cannot pee.”

• That same morning, a first grader informs me during a timed fluency assessment, “Mrs. V. I can’t think when pee is coming out of me!”

             Me: “Are you peeing?”

             Student: “Yes.”

During second grade intervention I always ask, “Who are you going to read to tonight?” When no one brings their signed passage back the next day, I ask, “Why didn’t you read your story to your mom last night?” The responses are eye-opening.

• “She was too busy talking to her friends and worried about what my costume was going to be today.”
• “My mom had to DoorDash.”
• Fourth graders were studying poetry. One morning, Mrs. B. says to a student who, with much difficulty and support, had just written a poem, “What a fantastic poem! I FEEL the emotions in it and it makes me want to cry! Do you want a hug?” Boy takes the hug, returns thirty seconds later with a fresh piece of paper and says, “I’m going to write ANOTHER poem. It will be a “part two” about the bird who can’t fly.”

Finally November arrives, but it’s a hard and heavy season:

• Third grade is discussing a book where a shark is hunting two children. When I ask them to predict what might happen next, a student announces, “You know they finna get cooked!”
• On another day I ask,  “Are you doing anything special this weekend?” 

“Yes,” says the one I’ve prayed for. “It will be the one year anniversary since my dad died. We are going to the beach to remember him.”

• Second grade intervention hasn’t changed much. “My mom threw the story away. She doesn’t care if I read.”
• One morning, heavy silence hangs over campus. Six boxes of Kleenex form a square on the table where I meet my third graders. Their teachers walk the hall with red-rimmed eyes. The empathy is palpable. The heartache – unfathomable. 
• On the 21st, we all pin loops of ribbon onto our green shirts with teeny-tiny safety pins in memory of an intelligent and beautiful girl whose favorite color was the color of springtime and Christmas trees and Dr. Seuss’s eggs and ham. Each time I see someone in green across campus, a lump forms in my throat as I think of our colleague and her family as they wade through shock and face a volcano of grief that will continue to erupt over and again for as long as they have memory. Wearing the color green, in all of its variations seems such a simple, almost trite thing in the face of such loss. Yet, I’m reminded, when I see a staff member’s little ribbon, to stop. To pray. To remember.  I wonder how we can all go on with our day and our duties when we know what we know and how can that green-loving-girl’s mama ever come back to work and continue to do what she does so well? The day weighs somber like that until a fourth grade girl grinningly tells me I look like Kermit the Frog, and somehow the spell is broken and I can smile again and trust that the One who gives life will breathe life into that mama’s lungs and give her hope and courage to carry on.
• One day, late in November, a boy I’ve never spoken to previously comes and stands beside me. “Mrs. V?” He looks at me nervously.

“Yes.”

After a long, long silence he says, “I think you are a very good teacher.”

Those words of affirmation must have carried me through December and into the new year because I’ve got nothing in my notes until January 10th when a fourth grader comments, “Every day when you come into our class, you have a smile on your face. How do you always keep a smile on your face?

My response? “Because I’m happy to see you.”

At the beginning of the new semester, I start seeing some fifth grade students I’ve never worked with before. One is new to the English language, and very bright. One day I ask, “Who speaks the best English in your home?”

“Me.” His response is quick.

“So, when important mail or information comes into your house, who reads it to your parents?”

“Me.”

“Do you understand why it is so important for you to be able to read and comprehend English?”

“Yes. My family depends on me. But, they can use Google Translator.”

February sneaks up on us and it’s not love that’s in the air.

• Fifth grade boy: “My feet smell like Doritos bro.”

Fifth grade girl: “Why?”

“Because I play soccer.”

One morning in March during a choral reading of, What Do Astronauts Do? a boy unwraps his chicken and biscuit and folds  a piece of aluminum foil over his upper teeth.

“Bro, what’s that?” his friend asks.

“That’s his grill,” explains another kid with a deadpan expression. 

Keeping a straight face hurts me. So does the thought of chewing on tin foil.  Meanwhile, dude with the “grill” and the rest of the group continue reading. “Are you ready for space mission training?” they chorus.

• After a girl reads aloud a FAST Writing test prompt, I ask, “Are you thinking about what you are reading?”

She responds, “My brain never makes sense of what I’m reading. I don’t know why.”

• Another fourth grader struggles to read the prompt. I encourage him to whisper-read it.

             “Will you listen to me? For some reason, I focus better when someone listens to me.”

• During Field day, Mrs. T. and I watch the first forty minutes of Cars about a billion times. The best review comes from a kindergartner. “I really liked that movie! I love race cars, monster trucks, motorcycles and rock-n-roll!” he announces to no one and everyone as he marches back to class.
• After Spring Break, I learn something I don’t know as a student explains to his peer why he can’t figure out how to write in all caps. “This computer doesn’t run on Windows, so it doesn’t have caps lock.”

I only have one sentence in my notes for April. It’s from a teary-eyed ten-year-old explaining why he dropped his crutches and ran into the pod on his broken foot during the active shooter drill.

• “I felt like I didn’t want to die, so I just ran on it. But I’m not supposed to.”

And now it’s May. 

• May…when a dumbfounded  kindergartener stage-whispers to her friend, “Hey! You’re my friend for this whole time and you never told me you could READ?”
• May…when someone reads “Astronaut Geeks” for “Ancient Greeks,” and you know you are doomed when testing time comes.
• May…when you can honestly say you’ve tried your best and given it your all and, “One score on one test does not define them as a person or me as an educator.”
• May…when you’ve survived a school year where the saying “six-seven” was awarded the 2025 Word of the Year by Dictionary.com. 

I want to leave you with one last conversation I overheard just the other day from two little girls waiting for their late bus:

• “We have to go on a different bus because Mr. R. got cancer. He’s never coming back to drive the bus. He always used to pray before we drove. Now my mom says we must pray for him.”

We might be tempted to think kids don’t notice who we are and what we stand for, but they do. They know who is fair and who is kind. They know who supports them and to whom they can speak about important things.

 We’ve done it, friends. We’ve managed to show up, fully clothed and in our mostly-right minds for the past one hundred-eighty days for these kids we’ve come to teach and grown to love. Kids who are hurting and thinking about things they shouldn’t have to worry about. Kids who are tired and distracted and difficult. Kids who try their best and make us proud and kids who love us because we are the safest people they know. 

 We’ve personally survived shingles and surgeries. Deaths and births. Water damage. Brain damage. Diagnoses that hurt and diets that really really work! We’ve earned our summer break badges, but will probably be teaching summer school or tutoring or listening to our grandkids read aloud. Hopefully we can also be found at the beach or the water park or in a hammock somewhere beautiful, because we cannot pour from empty cups. We need our soul’s batteries recharged so we can do this all again. Have a wonderful, restful, joyful summer. You definitely deserve it!