The Sun Still Shines on I-95

The Sun Shines Under I-95

Prologue"Ms. H’s Assignment

 

May 26, 2011

Twenty-one days of school left.

I came home early one Thursday afternoon in May, dumped the pile of ungraded grammar quizzes on the living room couch and dove into bed. After laying there in silence for a solid 15 minutes, I pulled my laptop onto my stomach and sat up. Gmail inbox contents for the day included: two job postings, a Living Social deal for 50% off at Flipsides, a gibberish lesson plan I had sent myself earlier that day, and one new message from Caroline Byrd, my 8^th grade writing student.

Caroline’s email contained a detailed account of how her long-time crush had finally asked her to the dance. Although she was only 13 years old, Caroline was by far my favorite email correspondent. After perusing the Living Social deal and checking my Facebook account (nine out of ten teachers have a summer countdown as their status) I decided that the quizzes and lesson plans could wait for a few hours as I caught up on that week’s episodes of Glee and Game of Thrones. 

Finally, at about 9:00, I started getting teacher anxiety because I still hadn’t finalized the next day’s lesson plans. I toyed with some ideas. Maybe another poetry unit would be a smart course of study for the hot month of June. Or perhaps my kids still need to review literary analysis papers.

“Ugh,” I thought to myself as I looked at the clock. “I just want them to write like writers. I want my kids to enjoy my class for once, or even start writing outside my class.”

I didn’t have much time left with this year’s 8^th graders. As a matter of fact, I had little time left as a teacher period. My letter of resignation after the close of the year was signed and acknowledged weeks ago. However, unlike many teachers planning to leave their profession, I could not stop caring about my students. I admit, I no longer cared as much about their standardized test scores as I had at the beginning of the year or staying on pace with the curriculum. Yet despite my current apathy toward the Connecticut State Learning Standards, the nagging desire to leave a legacy, to impact my students for the better remained.

Unfortunately, the desire to have some kind of magical impact on my students was not the same as having a plan to impact my students and it was already 9:35.

As I checked my email for the tenth time that night, I saw that I had a new message from Meghan, another one of my most gifted scholars.

“Ten minute distraction!” I smiled.

Meghan and I were exchanging poetry ideas and discussing a Maya Angelou video I showed her on Youtube.

“If all of my students were as talented as Meghan and Caroline, I could teach forever,” I mused. “It wouldn’t feel like work at all.”

Meghan and Caroline, along with their other best friends, Lila and Sevan were my top writers. Although I feel terrible admitting it, I always graded their papers first, just because their writing was a pleasure for me to read.

The four of them were such talented and mature young ladies. All four of them had received scholarships to attend prestigious high schools next fall.

“I wonder what will happen to them next year?” I thought as I tapped my foot against the white metal frame of my bed. “Will they stay close like my friends and I have? Will they still write beautiful stories when they are 17 and studying for the SATs?”

Then my brilliant idea hit me like a revelation in a dream. Even if I was doubtful of my ability to change the life-trajectory of every student in my class, I knew I could definitely have an effect on these young ladies, with whom I already had a strong relationship.

I would ask them, for their final project in my class, to write a joint story of their lives, from this day through the end of their freshmen year of high school. Each girl would write, from her own point of view, a kind of diary-letter every few weeks and send it to the other girls and myself. I had a feeling this would not only keep this amazing group together as they went their separate ways.

A noble project for me to facilitate. It must be confessed, however, that a part of my motivation for assigning the girls this project was not exactly altruistic on my behalf, but rather a kind of selfish curiosity; if Lila, Sevan, Caroline and Meghan could write as well as they did on their own, what would they come up with when working together?

With twenty-one days left in my teaching career, had I gotten it right?

Author's Note

Where am I not as engaging as I should have been?
IS my writing as clear as it needs to be at this point this point?

Reviews

[UnderTheRowanTree]

The email from Caroline, and the email Meghan are too far apart, and that makes the point to of the story difficult to see. and why i am doing it. Second email before might not have much time/wanting to write like writers