Take Your Senior English Teacher To College

As a Freshman English teacher, it was easy to know what students needed to be able to do to be prepared for Sophomore English since I taught that course! The same was true when I taught Junior English.

Senior English is a different animal: not all of my students are going to college. Some will not take a freshman composition class. Some will never write another literary analysis essay again.

So when alumni visit, I ask them, “What does your Senior English teacher need to know?” I ask how the reading and writing is going? I asked what surprised them and for what they felt prepared. I ask them to give me their top four things about college, and it is always nice when classes are on that list.

But this summer, as I think about my wonderful former-seniors heading off to college in the fall and those who preceded them, I have a different idea. What if I just rode along with you? How about taking your Senior English teacher to college?

And while I am eager to meet my new students, I would love to hang on to the old ones! Once I proposed that we reconstitute one of my Freshman English classes when the students became seniors. There was no way to do it. The kids and I loved the idea, but it was impossible – just like this one, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it.

I get quick glimpses of my former students in the summer. There are photos on social media, and conversations in town. I see them at the farmers market, coaching little league, counseling camp, or at other summer jobs. Summer is a mere preamble for them and I want to say, “Take me with you!”

I know I will feel the same way about the students who are about to enter my class in the fall, but right now, my mind is on those whom I may never see again. Wasn’t there some TV show where, when the main characters grew too old, the high school teachers just moved up to college with them? That seems so civilized and appropriate.

Here is the plan: we will all go to the same college together. How’s that?

I treasure the students who connect on social media, return for visits at breaks, or email to let me know that how they are doing and give me a peek into their post-high school lives.

I joke about the opposite as my students near graduation: how about flunking something senior year, I ask them, and then you can have one more year of high school? I tempt them with promises of favorite books, units or good grades, but we both know it is just my way of saying that I will miss you when you leave – and you’ll be far too engaged in your new world to think much about your former teacher in the old one.

That is the way it should be. It is the natural order that children grow up and move on. Yet, how many non-teachers have their co-workers move through their lives like that? I know, they aren’t my co-workers, but I spend as much time with my students as I do with my fellow teachers!

One of my former students sent me a beautiful email recently telling me that he had placed out of the Freshman English course at his university. He thanked me for my very small part in that. Knowing this young man, he will explore and read and learn in wonderful ways that I hope I get to see. I have faith that he will let me know about some of them.

So, in a sense, he has acknowledged that he is taking me to college. He is taking the skills he learned in our class to college in the fall. That is going to have to be enough.