Late May in schools is rife with many emotions. Teachers and administrators are ready to bid the year farewell and to get to summer vacation. Late May brings with it the promise that an opportunity for rest and recharging is not far away. Certainly there are some obstacles yet to clear with exams or grading final projects, cleaning out of classrooms and turning in of reports, packing up materials and checking out of buildings.

Though the end is nigh, there are still things to do.

Our students have things to do, too and they normally do not accomplish one of the most critical tasks at the end of the school year. With varying degrees of seriousness and success, they approach their final projects and tests. They clean out their lockers. They sign their yearbooks and they say their goodbyes. But they typically leave out something very important.

Multiple summers down the road, when water has passed under bridges and calendar pages have turned, many former students realize they forgot something back in the spring months of their school days. At some point in the journey of their lives your former students recognize what happened and many seek out past instructors to tell them something profound: “you changed my life.”

It is not entirely fair to expect students living in these late May moments to understand what has occurred in their lives. Some do. Some know the debts of gratitude they owe. Some are able to articulate this to their teachers. But the vast majority have not the breadth of knowledge, the introspection or the reflective capacity to get it.

Not yet.

They have not lived enough life and that is okay. As educators, we know that our students are not finished products. They have more to learn.

And so do we because, in the late May morass, we are just as likely to forget to acknowledge to ourselves that we have, in fact, changed lives.

Working in schools is not like painting a wall. Teachers do not get to blue tape the edges of their students and fill in the gaps until they are fully colored and vibrant. Teachers do not get to see the results of the hours of preparation and the early mornings and the late nights. Teachers do not know the seeds they are planting as they are dropping them in fertile ground. Teachers do not always know the effect they have until long after they have had it.

At this moment, I know full well that many of your students are not paying attention to you in class, are pushing every button you have, and are just as ready to be away from you as you are from them. I know that many of us are just as ready for summer as our charges are. I know that there is much to accomplish and much to do. I know this. But I know something else, too. In late May teachers need this critical perspective and I would like to provide it.

Please allow me to remind all the teachers and coaches and administrators and educational professionals: you have changed lives these last nine months. Please allow me to remind you about something that is profound in our work:

You have changed lives.

Treasure giving that gift, even if those who receive it are not always able to acknowledge that they have.

This is the final edition of Teach & Serve for the 2023-2024 school year. 

Teach & Serve X will launch next fall on 8.7.24.

Any way we look at the calendar, we must inevitably reach one conclusion: the calendar is winding down on the school year. 

It is a time of anticipation. A break is coming. We can almost taste it. 

Thank. God.

But while we experience the joy of these last days, we ought to remember they can be a time of intense stress for our students. Yes, we have much to do, but so do they. Though their perceptions may not always be accurate, our students can feel that the whole year comes down to the next few days, that all they have done all year will not amount to anything if they do not nail it now. They may feel that the next few days are the most critical ones.

While I would be very skeptical of a system or a teacher or a class that backloads everything for students who are not in college to the last few minutes of the year, I know it happens. I know students feel this way.

I know it. You do, too. 

Heck, you may agree they should feel this way, that they should be pounding right until the end and that these days should be circled in red.

Fine. Any and all of the above is fine.

But, please, for the love of your students, remind them of this, repeat this, tell them this: “You can succeed.”

It is my hope they have heard this from you in overt and covert ways all year.

They should have.

But now, more than ever, remind them: “You can succeed.”

Your words have power. Your words have meaning.

There is a wonderful moment in the terrific show The West Wing when speech writers Sam Seaborn and Toby Ziegler are developing material for the President of the United States to deliver at the Annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. These comments are intended to showcase the President’s lighthearted relationship with the Fourth Estate and are supposed to engage, amuse and challenge.

It is not going well for these fictional writers.

As they review their work, Sam says to Toby: “You know what they forgot? They forgot to bring the funny.”

Not every leader is funny. Not every leader has the ability to make light of situations. Not every leader can readily make people laugh. But every leader should consider leaning into lighthearted moments. Every leader should consider creating lighthearted moments. Bringing the funny tends to put people at ease.

Leaders should not forget to bring the funny (especially as the end of the year is SO CLOSE). The ability to make people laugh and to release the tensions of challenging situations should not be underrated. 

The work we do can feel relentless. Lightening things up is a welcome relief for those we lead. 

Bring. The. Funny.

As we approach the end of this school year, the thoughts of many students turn ever more pressingly to grades. While it may well seem that some of these students are considering their final grades for the first time, most in our buildings are looking at the bottom line and, typically, they are wanting to know how to move it. The ante is upped this time of year and the pressure around grades seems to rise with each passing day in May.

There has been a significant and important conversation in academic circles around the entire concept of grades and educators, too, are ramped up about them at the end of the school year. Many avoid the term “grades” and substitute the word “assessment” when they discuss their students’ progress in their classes. Many talk about “mastery” and “progress” and “formal and informal reflections” and these terms are not simply turns of phrase. 

“Grades” is a word that suggests the result of a review of a final product. Other words connote the overview of a process.

This is a very important distinction and how a school in general and a teacher individually measure student progress says very much about how both the school and the teacher function. It also indicates how the learning process is conceptualized by school leaders.

A focus on end result versus a focus on process defines much of what a school does and defines almost all of what a teacher does. Grading is a teacher-centered process: the teacher grades the assignment; the student is graded. Assessment is a collaborative process: the student illustrates her progress towards understanding and mastery; the teacher collaborates with the student.

If the days of asking students to memorize and return sets of facts and figures to their teachers are not over in your school, I would suggest you might wish to ask yourself some questions about your method of proceeding. Neither do students of today truly learn this way, nor does the world of today function this way. Grades tend to value how students master a series of objective facts. Assessment tends to value how students master the overall process of learning.

Schools which are focused primarily on grades – on the product and not the process – are schools preparing students for a world that is long past. 

At this point of the school year, it is far too late for a school or teacher to change the approach to end marks. However, the summer approaches and the cyclic nature of our work means fall cannot be far behind.

As summer begins, take a deep breath, enjoy a few moments of down time and then consider the tension between assessment and grades. Consider how you value each. Consider why you ask your students to do what you ask them to do and consider the type of reality for which you are preparing them. Are you more concerned with what they can produce or how they produce? Is not how our students critically think at least as important as what they think? Is not what they think deeply influenced by how we have taught them to think? 

How do we know?

May 2024.

Already.

In schools, we have much to do, much we are asked to do and much that we take upon ourselves. We have full calendars, overflowing plates, and deadlines – many of which we truly cannot miss. We work with students and adults who present challenges to us, who make demands on our time and who, on occasion, may cause us stress.

Stress happens.

At this time of year in particular, we sometimes feel stress, sometimes feel strung out, and sometimes feel we are not at our best.

So, please, listen to me: walk the track.

Somewhere in your building or on your grounds, I trust there is a space you can walk – an open, extended space where you can get out of your typical environs, get moving, get a pace on. Hopefully there is someplace you can go when you need to stretch your legs.

Perhaps there is a track.

Getting up and walking is more than a chance to change your venue and your vantage point. It is a chance to get up and get out, to exercise whatever feelings have built up in you by exercising yourself. It is a chance to shake off ennui and frustration and to do something proactive to assist in your own renewal. It is a chance to refresh and renew and get ready for the next item on the stretch run.

A person with whom I used to work and whom I respect very much made a pledge to our entire leadership team one May not too long ago and I have not forgotten it. 

“I promise, if you need to, if you want to, I’ll walk the track with you,” he said.

I think I should have taken him up on that request more often than I did. 

I am at a new school. It has a track.