Bricks serving as reminders of all I have lost

Yesterday was the last day of the 2019-2020 school year.

For the last 21 years, I have been teaching at Wolcott School in West Hartford, CT. For more than two decades, I have celebrated the last day of the school year and first moments of summer vacation with my students.

Yesterday’s celebration was decidedly different.

Though I saw most of my students, it was the first time in months that we had seen one another in person, and we remained socially distanced while doing so, passing back materials from their desks and lockers, collecting library books and musical instruments, and offering best wishes for the summer months.

Not exactly the celebrations that have marked the previous two decades, but still an important transition. My students are off to middle school in the fall, and a new group of students who I will quickly come to love will enter my classroom in September.

As someone who has worked in the same school for more 20 years, I have come to understand transition well. While I have occupied the same space – and for the last 18 years, the same classroom – the people around me – teachers, parents, and students – have been in a constant state of flux. I’ve watched people come and go for years. I can walk by classrooms and name the half-dozen teachers or more who once taught in that space. I’ve watched enormous additions get added to our school, and I’ve also watched classrooms bulldozed to the ground.

In the front of our school is a small patio of bricks, placed more than a dozen years ago as a fundraiser for the school. Folks purchased a brick on behalf of themselves and beloved teachers.

Yesterday, as I stood over the bricks, I realized how much has changed in a relatively short period of time.

I found bricks on that patio marking the 25 year career of my former principal, Plato Karafelis, as well as his twin girls, who also attended the school. I taught one of the girls, and my wife, Elysha, taught the other.

Plato retired 7 years ago and is now living on the west coast, but he remains my dear friend. Plato gave me a chance to teach when I was stupid, inexperienced, and decidedly rough around the edges. He afforded me the permission to take chances. Gave me the opportunity to excel. He taught me how to direct children’s theater. Introduced me to my future wife. Officiated our wedding. Fought wars alongside me. Cast me in his musicals. Played hundreds of rounds of golf with me.

For about 15 years, Plato’s life and mine were as intertwined as two lives can be. I miss him everyday.

Mr. Michaud was a kindergarten teacher who left the profession several years ago to take over his father’s business so that his father could retire. The teaching profession lost an authentically brilliant teacher when he moved onto to other things. He remains a close friend today and the godfather to my daughter, Clara, but we no longer spend our work days side by side.

He’s moved on like so many others.

Rob Hugh – former West Hartford Teacher of the Year – retired two years ago after teaching vocal music for 39 years. He remains a dear friend today. Rob played the music for our wedding ceremony. Co-wrote musicals with Plato and served as musical director for the shows in which I performed. Once auditioned and rejected Elysha for a select choral group when she was in elementary school. Some of my best and funniest memories of the two decades spent taking fifth graders on overnight trips to a YMCA camp in Colebrook, CT are with Rob.

I miss him every day.

Kathy Paquette – our former librarian and also a West Hartford Teacher of the Year – retired several years ago and moved south. While teaching together, she routinely sold me her Patriots tickets until I managed to secure my own. My classroom was once a part of her library before the school was renovated. We stay in touch via social media, but I have not seen Kathy in a long time.

Donna Gosk and I taught together for more than fifteen years. We shared a love for children, the written word, and nonconformity that drew us together instantly. She was my mentor, my colleague and remains my dear friend today. She and I attend Moth events together in Boston and still play golf whenever we can. She is a primary character in one of my novels. She’s been happily retired for a few years now, but I sometimes forget as I approach her old classroom, thinking I can’t wait to tell Donna something, only to be reminded that she has moved on.

The Hires family, Donna and Jeff, were parents of a student who became close friends. Donna hosted the biggest, best classroom parties alongside her friend, Mary Kate, and supported me as a teacher early in my career. Donna and Jeff would invite Elysha and me to their beach house in Rhode Island for lovely weekends of food and laughter. On the night that Barack Obama became the first African American President in the history of our country, Donna and I were on the phone together, watching the results from our respective homes. Elysha and Jeff had gone to bed when the results were clear, but Donna and I stayed awake, wanting to be present when the results were made official. Donna and Jeff have retired to Florida, and I still stay in touch with her via social media, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen these wonderful people or their children.

And of course, there is Elysha, who I see every day but who I once worked alongside, too. Elysha and I met at colleagues in 2002, and about 18 months later, we were together. The classroom where she once taught no longer exists. A grassy field has replaced the four walls where we fell in love. Elysha and I taught together until Clara was born in 2009. She’s back to teaching now, but this time in a different school in our district that she adores.

I’m happy that she is happy, and I know that her colleagues love her, but there was nothing better than teaching alongside my wife for those seven years.

These are just a few of the hundreds of friends and colleagues who have come and gone. This weekend I will play golf with the parent of former students who is now the godfather to Charlie. I’ll play with two other former Wolcott teachers who have moved onto other schools and other careers. I’ll undoubtedly see others this summer and beyond. Former members of this community who have moved on but have remained in my life.

Schools are funny places. They become the center of a person’s universe for such a long period of time. Parents sometimes spend twenty years at an elementary school as their brood of children pass through, or someone spends the vast majority of their career teaching children within its walls. It becomes a place of celebration and tradition. Turmoil and triumph. Schools mark the passage of time for families as their children learn and grow. It can mark an entire career, as it has done for me.

Then one day, you move on. Your children outgrow the school, or you retire or move on as a teacher. A place that was once the hub of your universe becomes a place that you never return to again.

It’s crazy.

Happily, I will return next year, and though I am certain that it will look different given the pandemic that we are living through. But families who I have known and loved for many years will have moved on as their youngest child departs for middle school. My dear friend, Joan, a teacher for more than 40 years, will be home in the fall enjoying her retirement. A teacher or two may move on over the course of the summer, advancing their careers by moving onto bigger and better positions at other schools.

I feel blessed to have spent 21 years in the same school with some of the best people who I have ever met. I feel so fortunate that so many of them are still in my life today. But looking at those bricks was also a reminder of those bygone days when Elysha and Plato and Rob and Jeff and Donna and all the rest worked alongside me, teaching children, supporting each other, and loving each other.

Teachers, parents, and children who were intertwined in my everyday life who have moved on.

This is a time of transition again. The end of a school year. The beginning of summer.

I love my summer vacations, but I don’t love the transition that it signals so much… the people who I lose every year as the days grow long and people move on.