While the winds of March have not let up, the winter term has passed. Spring break is a different sort of break altogether: it is less of a rest and more of a gearing up and getting ready to go. We are about to enter, perhaps, the busiest term of all. The largest challenge, I suspect, facing the school is finishing the business of the year while concurrently planning for the next. Many may not appreciate the fact, but at the very time everyone is hustling to complete various yearlong goals and put a cap on the year, a lot of folk are mapping out the significant goals and logistics for the upcoming academic year. There are also the growing pains to speak of--

Juniors are itching to be lower middlers; lower middlers are itching to be upper middlers; upper middlers are itching to be seniors; seniors are itching, aching, arching to be gone-- This latter group, the seniors, find it very difficult to focus on the present task, particularly once the have a sense of a particular destination they will have in the fall. Moreover, they genuinely have  outgrown the school (through the success of the independent-oriented curriculum of the school). Seniors are simultaneously trying to soak up the most of the last of the experience they are able. Time, for them especially, but for everyone is accelerated or seems so.

Spring sports maintain these impressively but dauntingly compact seasons of mere weeks compared to the months of earlier seasons. Teachers urgently try to accomplish all they can with the students they have grown to care about so dearly. It is the last opportunity for them to make a positive impact on these students. There is a mass amount of material that must be covered by the end of the year because there is always more to learn. Teachers want to prepare their students for the next stage in the process.

Special events add up and delightfully begin to fill the end of the year as well as time passes. After all the hectic activity comes the beauty of baccalaureate, graduation and the awards dinner. This is when everyone is duly rewarded, especially seniors at commencement, for all the work they have put in, all the trouble they have suffered, all the growth they have engendered in themselves.

I know I am leaving out a lot of what transpires in the spring because my mind is racing just thinking about it. Exams, for example! That's not as pleasant, say, as Prom. There are monday night lectures to anticipate. The Board of Regents will be here. Some students endure the AP exams beyond what are regular final exams. It is busy, busy, busy, as they say. It all points to growth and cultivation and progress and culmination, and it entices one, at this dreary close of March when the wind still blows, to be very excited.

Posted by Matthew Kearney at March 22, 2008 8:00 AM

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