It’s happening again.
The end of a school year—the goodbyes, the relief of summer, the anticipation for the fall not yet begun.
I sit a little misty-eyed as I consider my seniors.  Their beautiful faces register excitement, confidence, and fear.  I know things about them that I shouldn’t.  Things that spilled out in writing assignments and poetry and tearful advisement sessions.  Knowing their weaknesses and their triumphs sweetens this moment all the more though, and I am grateful to have walked alongside them for just a little while.

It occurs to me that teaching is the closest I will venture toward the fountain of youth.  I watch the coming-of-age stories pass before my eyes, as boys and girls become men and women, and I am the one who absorbs the youth somehow.  I cannot live their lives for them.  I do not try.  But our paths cross and parallel for a time and we share our stories along the road, and we feel more whole for it.

This is why I continue to return to teach each fall against all odds.  Because standardized testing, scope and sequence, content core standards, and other legislation cannot create a deep sense of what it truly means to be human.  It is only when we approach each other as fellow sojourners, compassionate and mindful, that we begin the work of living well.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s words hang above my desk and I pray they guide our journey with the people we each influence:

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.  It is my personal approach that creates the climate.  It is my daily mood that makes the weather.  I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.  In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.  If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.  If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”   ~Goethe (1749-1832)

I am reminded that I have the power to approach this next day, week, month and year of my life with the dignity that Goethe describes.  I hope to embrace every minute—to savor the sorrow and the joy on the path, for it is all part of this beautiful, fragile thing called life.