Overview:
As his school prepares to close, a volunteer tutor reflects on a gifted student's reimagined ending to The Giver, finding hope in endings rather than sadness.
Great teachers, like Anne Sullivan, embrace optimism and strive to nurture it in their students. Born just after the Civil War, a childhood disease left Anne partially blind. Overcoming that obstacle, she graduated from college and entered Helen Keller’s life as her teacher. Helen came to adopt Anne’s optimism and later in life wrote, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.” Life tested Helen and a recent announcement is testing the optimism of educators and staff at St Michael-St Clement elementary/middle school (STM-STC). The school will permanently close when the current school-year ends. One veteran teacher, some of whose math students I’ve tutored, acknowledged that, “It was sad news for all of us.” Yet the sadness of STM-STC’s final chapter in no way detracts from the story written during the school’s nearly 100-year history.
It’s a history rooted in that wonderful interaction between students and teachers in which learning and personal growth take place. A history unfolding each school-year as teachers share with their students the knowledge discovered over millennia and cultivate character traits like faith, self-discipline and fair play. Ursuline nuns began teaching St Michael’s students about 390 years after the order’s founding in Italy. (Clearly, it took a while for the good sisters to make their way from the old country to the United States.) Six years after St Michael’s doors opened, the Franciscan order launched St Clement. The two schools merged in 2017, the year I retired from a career spent mainly in banking and began a new chapter as a volunteer tutor at STM-STC. Over the years, including decades teaching evening classes at local colleges, I’ve met and said farewell to many wonderful students. Teachers are used to saying goodbye. For a teacher, the word combines the sadness of parting and optimism for the student’s future.
I couldn’t have written a better ending for my time at STM–STC than my final tutoring sessions with Simone. Several weeks ago we switched from math problems to completing an ELA assignment based on Lois Lowry’s book, The Giver. Simone’s task to rewrite the story’s ending, just as the school’s story came to a close, struck us as a remarkable coincidence. Coincidence aside, we began focusing on alternate endings for The Giver. Simone produced some truly creative ideas and during the next weekly session we reviewed the draft of her hopeful, compelling and emotional ending.
The third week, Simone gave the completed assignment to her ELA teacher. It had expanded from the two-page draft we reviewed to five pages, with Simone introducing a handful of new characters. Since the instructions specified two paragraphs or more, I asked Simone how her teacher reacted to five pages. “She seemed very anxious to read it,” Simone replied. Her teacher’s reaction suggests a very dedicated educator, indeed. Simone also mentioned discussing the assignment with a classmate. Near the end of their conversation, her friend expressed surprise at how much time Simone spent completing it, asking, “How long does it take to write two paragraphs?”
Siimone and I went on to discuss the content of her ending to The Giver. Among my other questions, did the introduction of a handful of new characters suggest a sequel? I asked the question lightheartedly; however, if posed more seriously would the response be that the book’s last chapter wasn’t the ending, but the transition to a new story? And beyond The Giver, were there broader implications? As we talked, the hour raced by and Simone decided on the main points for a slimmer version of her ending. How impressive that Simone wanted to continue working on her paper, even though she had already submitted the longer version to her ELA teacher! But then, Simone consistently showed that she worked, not just for a grade, but to improve her skills and fully realize her potential.
In our next session, Simone delivered a revised closing of one and a half pages, its focus sharper without sacrificing creativity or emotional impact. While we considered further revisions, I enthusiastically praised Simone for much of what she wrote. The following is my favorite passage from her draft: “Jonas leaned his head against the car window in defeat. No longer were tears coming from him, just silent regret.” Extraordinary and thought-provoking. I wonder how many at STM-STC share similar feelings in their emotional parting from a school that Simone described as holding “all my memories.”
Memories will soon be all that remain as STM-STC writes the final pages of its history. That it will forever be part of history, however, offers consolation. As Robert E. Lee, then president of Washington College, wrote near the end of his life, “The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.” Hopefully, the school’s teachers and support staff will soon write a new chapter in their lives, not in sadness or regret, but with satisfaction and optimism. Those hopeful feelings rooted in their experiences with students, like Simone, whose potential they nurtured as their guides and mentors. It’s one of the most important roles that educators play and has always been one of a teacher’s highest callings.
