How to Wrap Up a School Year...

One thing we have done at this site, particularly in the New Teacher Collaborative, was to track the ups and downs, ins and outs of a school year -- from the perspective of a teacher.  

We arrive now at June:  time to wrap things up and get on with summer.

But, before break begins, let's think and talk about ending the year on a positive note. 

Endings are very important, and doing them well is not easy or automatic.  It takes skill, insight and planning to pull them off successfully--and some luck to avoid the excesses of energy and excitement within students associated with being "done" for the year.  (Yes, they will scream and throw paper at the last bell.)

In many ways, the end of the school year has always been my favorite, and the most meaningful part of the year--if a little caught up in nostalgia for times gone by.  

Students, in many cases, will have been together for nine months, seen the best of times and worst, learned, changed, grown and generally moved further down the trail of understanding who they are.  Even those that have only been together for 10 or 15 weeks will be at the "end" of their academic experience for the year. 

This calls for reflection, recognition and celebration.

First, do not try to do things that your students are not prepared for or comfortable with. 

In other words, if you have not been building toward the kind of sharing, cohesion and trust that is necessary to do some of these activities, then the end of the school year is not the time to give these a shot.

In fact, the way I look at it is that you need to build toward the end of the school year from the very first week in September:  What do you want your students to be able to do that last week?  What lessons do you want them to take out the door?  What connections with each other?  What interest or relationship with the material?

All of these things should have been built into the fabric of what you have done from the beginning and are a natural outgrowth of regular activities.  If you haven't gotten to that point, well, that should be an excellent motivator for re-thinking how you are going to do things next fall.

Example:  portfolios.  At this time of year,  I have students pull together all their work-- the assignments, exams, journals, everything we have worked on--and put them into some kind of order.   Usually that means using a three-hole punch and putting them into a three-ring binder, though some students just pile everything into pocket folders.

I have them write an introduction to the portfolio explaining how it is organized (by date, grade received, favorite to least favorite, etcetera) and ask that they include a Table of Contents.  This process allows them to reflect upon their school year, their classmates, and their academic efforts.  

I submit that the real value of a portfolio is not for the teacher or other outsider to assess the student's work.  Not even close.  The real value is in the student's self-analyzing of what they did well and did not do well during the course of the school year.  Did they work well with others or were they better off working alone?  Did they prefer projects over exams?  How do they see their writing progress coming along?   What material was their favorite?  And on and on.

The real value of portfolios, as with other reflective tasks at the end, is so that students come to a larger understanding of who they are, what preferences they have and where they need to improve. 

And in general, that should be the goal of the other "wind up" activities here in early June:  give students every opportunity to ponder, learn and grow by looking back at what transpired.

Second, allow for maximum collaboration and sharing.

Public education has been seen, more and more, as a private experience of individuals.  I challenge that.  I think it is a public experience in which individuals are exposed to and share with their fellow citizens.  We all pay for it;  we should all be in it together.

So, I make sure that all students share something significant with each other at the end.  Again, if your class has not been doing this from the beginning, it is not likely they will be able to handle it at the end.

But, here's what I do:  We gather as a group, and when I team-taught an integrated Social Studies-English class that meant a group over 50, and each person gets their "turn" to share about several different topics:  What they learned most about themself.  What their favorite unit of study was.  Their funniest moment.  The one memory they will never forget.  What plans they have for summer.

Each student marches to the front and shares these.  It really is quite remarkable, and yes, I do keep the tissues handy because it can be very touching, though we laugh more than cry.

Also, as described elsewhere, I have them tape a blank piece of paper to their back and then provide time (@ 20-30 minutes) for students to write something positive on each student's back.  It may sound risky, but actually, the students are quite good at this, and the fun it creates as long lines form with students writing on each other's back is very striking and unique. 

Sometimes, when this is all done then I have an all-class soccer match or kickball game.  To see each other in a completely different context, like an athletic field, to understand that we all have different skills and abilities, it feels very much like a beginning of something not an end.

In any case, as a reward for sharing significantly with each other, I then turn toward a celebration.

But, and this is a big but, I do not have a celebration without having first crossed a threshold together, where everyone had to risk something and now "feels" as if they are done.

Provide plenty of rich feedback.

In addition to the kinds of activities described above, I think it is very important for students to get rich feedback from their peers and teacher.

Much of the feedback from students come in the "feedback" activity I describe above, but you can also build it into their final mini-presentation by asking them to name one student who helped them during the year or who taught them a lesson. 

So, there are ways to have students credit each other and generally they are quite good at this--if you have build up this level of trust.

But the really important feedback that teachers control the most is their own. 

This is hard and time-consuming, but it is so very important.  

I usually write a summative letter that I place in their portfolio or their final journal.  I used to handwrite them all--in print, in ink, on school stationary.  I believe that putting your thoughts together is a special occasion and how you present them should reflect that.  In later years, to save time, I would type up my summative letter and print it on school stationary.

What goes into the letter? 

Oh, everything I can think of, but usually mostly observations about what that particular student does well.  I have my set of memories, plus I have the portfolio in front of me.  Between the two rich sets of data I can usually whip up something that is both insightful and meaningful for both of us.  

I talk about the times we have shared.  I use their name.  I discuss their skills and what areas are strong and which may need some shoring up. I share observations about how they work with other people.  I talk about their potential going forward.  Just the usual things. 

Though, importantly I guess, I never really get into their grade. Funny, but that just is not what matters to me at the end of the school year.

What matters is what I have seen, what they student has done, and where they can get to from where they are at.

And maybe that's the point of the end of the year.  For me, it shouldn't be about judgment or a final letter or a number.  Nor should it be about cliches.  That's not what education or learning are about.  

It's about the process.  And, in every way possible, the goal at the end of the year is the same as it was at the beginning:  to point the way forward into learning as a process of self-discovery, collaboration and engagement.

The end of the year is just one more opportunity, maybe the best of all, to get young people to see how worthwhile learning and education really are.