Today is the end.
When the afternoon bells ring out and send our students towards summer vacation they will have rung for the final time. Our school, our Fairview, has come to the last of her days. For decades she has welcomed students in the fall and bid farewell to those students in the spring, but after this day her lights will fade, her doors will close, and her bells will ring no more. Within those doors, inside the darkness and surrounded by silence, Fairview's walls will remain standing, held strong by all they have seen...and heard...and felt.
Those walls - those silent, sturdy walls - have watched school years slip by and carry generation after generation from student to parenthood to grandparents. The walls of our school have stood firm against forces of turmoil from without - weather, poverty, family dysfunction - so our students could find the constants of love and care and safety within. The walls welcomed all, held all, guided all with never a hesitation. They never took breaks, never complained, and never failed to be that place...be in place...to help so many feel at home.
The walls of our school, though unchanging from year to year, have forgotten more changes than most of us will ever know. They've seen education based on outcomes, graduation based on packets of performance, report cards based on standards. The walls have seen us take Journeys and make Expressions, read with PALS and Companions, move ForWordFast while noticing who CARES. They've watched our Daily 5, seen you Give Me 5, and probably had to listen to the Jackson 5. The walls have helped plant Seeds Of Change (twice), seen us Think Big, and watched us Move It. Our walls have not only held alphabets, they've heard alphabets: PBIS, RTI, NWEA, ECFE, NCLB, IEP, AYP......OMG!
Within these walls we've shown our Mustang Pride while using our LifeSkills. The walls watched us wear orange on one day, then show up in blue the next. The walls hosted beach parties and pajama days, watched us jump rope for hearts and collect pennies for patients. Our walls have seen kids walk by with a stamp on one hand while carrying an ice pack in the other. Every brick of every wall has taken a turn holding artwork and poems and posters and banners and graphs and stories and photos and reminders and class lists and voice levels and flags and displays and rules and character traits and murals and.....did I say reminders? Through all of these moments and duties and more our walls have kept watch, kept us safe, kept us together.
The walls of Fairview have been my home longer than any other structure in my life. For 19 years I've walked along her walls and taught kids in her rooms alongside the most supportive family a feller could hope for. The walls of our school suffered through my worst interview but somehow welcomed me to my first job. When I began I knew no one in the school or the town and had no family in the area. Two decades later I am in awe at how crazy lucky I was to have those walls create my home away from home. Those walls bowed a little under my swelled pride the day my first child was born; a dozen years later I swear they leaned towards me a little to offer support during some much darker days. I'm sure others could share the same stories - wedding showers, baby announcements, and retirement parties were known by all, but sometimes only the walls knew of the funerals, the diseases, the divorces, and the failures.
As these last weeks have steadily moved along and our final day approached many Fairview family members wished time would stand still. (side note: Time quite literally has stood still for the last couple of months. Our clocks died during the first thunderstorm of the spring and haven't been fixed since. It's been 5:20 since late March.) We've tried to savor our time in this old building that some say is inadequate, though in it we've managed to consistently lead kids to heights well above adequacy. Try as we may, the days have disappeared in a flurry of testing and packing and field trips until all we are left with is a handful of hours. So on this last day I will stop at some moment, at some spot, and gently lay my hand on a wall and connect one final time with this lifeless structure that has meant so much to so many lives. I will thank her for giving me innumerable memories during what have been some of the best years, and worst years, of my life. I will praise her ability to bring staff together every day and allow them to nurture so many young lives. I will bid her a fond farewell, and ask her one last favor: to hold all of the memories that will slowly escape me.
And then I will start looting.
