Today was the last day of school for the kids. At least, the last day before it is definitive who passes and who gets held back a year. After today, all that is left for them is to pick up their report card on Friday and go hang out as a class one last time before summer break. In my experience at least a third of the class will have already bailed and be on holiday by then, so it’ll probably be a lot quieter. Not that I work on that day. My last interaction with these kids before the summer break was today, when they came to pick up their tests. It was unfortunate that a lot of kids opted to not pick up their tests. It’s not a mandatory thing after all, but it would have been nice to talk with them one last time before the summer. We look at these things differently through the lens of teachers after all.
But the kids that did show up were nice to see and one of them even said something super lovely. To give some context, the class he was in was a fun group of kids but their behavior would regularly cross boundaries and make my life difficult. I never disliked teaching them though – and as you might know from the previous year that can definitely happen – and they were always friendly. One of the boys from that class who was definitely one of the more rambunctious kids told me that he still remembered how I said at the start of the year that I would make English their favorite class. And he told me I kept my promise, because whenever they saw English on the schedule, they were never disappointed. As a teacher, I think that’s probably the highest praise. Although I will add that the main reason their behavior didn’t strike me as too problematic is because their grades were fine.
And for me, well we still have meetings left to go through. Those boys might be happy knowing they’re easily moving on to year 3, but there are still quite a few students on the chopping block waiting to find out if they’ve just barely made it or not. We have guidelines for the results they need to move on to year 3, but if you’re just below those results, the teachers from your year will come together and look at your specific case to decide what to do. It can be that there were circumstances that caused you to underperform, or that we saw enough growth within the year to give you a chance. Either way, we want all kids to get to the place where they perform best. I’m not going to explain the Dutch education system again since it’s a dumb system, but secondary school is divided into different difficulties, which end with different degrees before going to college/uni. Sometimes doing a lower difficulty will fit a student better, and there are many different roads to take afterwards so it’s not a big deal. But it is difficult to make those decisions in some cases, so we’ll see.
Then on Thursday are the final meetings to close out the week for us teachers. Then starts the six weeks of summer holidays. The biggest benefit of being a teacher after all are the vacations. And then after summer a whole new crop of second year students will come running and I’ll have to continue my coworkers’ hard work of raising them into respectable third years. Often a fruitless endeavor, but at least it’s fun at times. I am hoping to really take some time to relax this summer. I’ve accepted that this year isn’t going to be a year in which I set personal heights for the amount of words I write and that’s okay, but I do want to get some good legwork done on some side projects and I’m still working hard on both volumes 1 and 4 of the Hesitant Hero, both are going well again after that break I took last month. I hope this post gave you a little bit of insight into the last days of the school year. I think I did a similar post last year, but whatever, I’m sure it’s still worth your time. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 