The Empty Classroom

Today as the last couple of students made their final exit, I sat quietly listening to the empty classroom . . . wondering where my students will go and who they will become and hoping that somehow our time together in Basic Composition, English 50, will help to make their journey more worthwhile.

Every September and again every February, I return to the college campus where I am given a machete and placed in a classroom filled with students as we all face a paper jungle of compositions: essays and summaries. While I thrill at watching students learn that they can express themselves on paper, the adventure remains an intense, draining, and quite delicate journey. With a troop of rookie students behind me, I try to properly carve a path through the jungle without causing casualties, and now four months after February's launch, after reading volumes of student papers, summer is found on the other edge of the jungle.

Every semester I introduce students to the topic of "literacy" and "education in America." I choose to teach basic skills students--some who can hardly read, hate to write, and must learn to spell. My hope, my desire, is to cause them to hunger for knowledge; most of them thirst for a degree.

In America children are taught "how" to read, not "why," and very few of them grow to "want" to read; furthermore, while politicians focus on the cost of an education, the price of ignorance strangles our nation, and the fact remains that the fee to attend Penn State is much less than the cost of a trip to the state pen.

Many current students in this age of the "drive-thru window," treat community college like a drive-up microphone ordering a course of this, that, and something else and a bag filled with a degree at the last window. So my twice a year challenge is to convince students that the career world is becoming skeptical of college degrees; therefore, they reward skills that are wed to the careful blending of critical thinking and knowledge. Each semester ends then with several convinced converts and my fuel pump is primed for the next semester's persuasive journey.

A bitter sweet moment happens at the spring semester's end when I tell students, "I understand that summer is just outside that door!" My heart races and it aches. The students and the instructor have arrived at an exit, but more than an exit--it's an entrance. They exit the classroom and enter their future.

I've grown fond of some of them and saying goodbye is difficult. On the other hand, some of them still loathe school and the classroom is the place they display their hostility, so saying goodbye is a relief, but sometimes even in some of those students hope glimmered during those months together.

So during July and August, I do a lot of nothing and enjoy it immensely. "Goodbye" happened today.

Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol

P.S. My classroom is in an industrial building so we have industrial lockers and windows that look out to "the shop."

P.P.S. Commencement ceremony is Thursday. It is a moment of serious celebration. I love it!