Teach & Serve V, No. 42
And Now, the End Is Near – Temporal Landmarks Bookended
May 20, 2020
Let us be confident as we stride into the summer. Let us congratulate ourselves on a race well run, a circle well drawn.
EVERGREEN POST
If you have been a reader of this blog all year, the following may look a little familiar…
You cannot hold back the sea and you cannot hold back the end of the school year.
Those of us involved in education are ramping up, feeling the itch, sensing the inevitable. In the coming days or weeks, we will embark on the closing rituals of the 2019-2020 school year: finals and shutting down and ceremonies and farewells. While we may now be stealing the last few moments of time with our students and our colleagues, we know that those moments are, at this point, fleeting and running out on us.
Hopefully, we are excited for the end to come and for the promise of time off.
Let us embrace the moment because this moment – the end of the school year, has power.
In his work When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (which was suggested to me by a wonderful friend and colleague and which I highly recommend) sociologist and scientist Daniel H. Pink writes about when people do things, when they are most successful at doing things and when they should do things.
Particularly salient to those of us in education at this time of year are his thoughts on temporal landmarks defined as dates that have significance and that draw a line between what is past and what is to come. Building on the work of researchers Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman, and Jason Riis, Pink says of a temporal landmark: “This new period offers a chance to start again by relegating our old selves to the past. It disconnects us from the past self’s mistakes and imperfections, and leaves us confident about our new, superior selves.”
Wow. That is a very interesting way for us to consider ourselves as we end this school year.
This year is about to be in the past. We can, as appropriate, disconnect from it. It is not that we forget it, we simply leave it behind in favor of this break we are about to have, of this summer spread before us. We use the temporal landmark of the end of the school year to review goals, to dream, to let go of our past “mistakes and imperfections” – which we all have.
This is a good thing.
Even better is embracing the confidence that comes with reflection on wrapping up. Better still is envisioning ourselves as we end this year as having accomplished something (somethings!) great.
One of my favorite things about being in education is that our time is broken up into manageable segments. I have not, until this year, however, thought about these segments as temporal landmarks. It is such a powerful way to reflect and to project.
As we end this year, let us reflect on how it went and learn from those reflections. Let us be confident as we stride into the summer. Let us congratulate ourselves on a race well run, a circle well drawn. The end is nigh…