End of the Year Letter

Below is the end of the year letter I will be reading to my class tomorrow on their last day of second grade.  The word that continues to come to mind as a season fades is bittersweet.  Sweet; as I escape the emotional challenges and mental demands that come with a career in a helping profession and drift into the restful and rejuvenating rhythms that summer provides and Bitter; as I say goodbye to a class of 26 beautiful children and to a community that will never again exist after 11:30 am tomorrow.

To My Dear Second Graders,

      Congratulations! We have made it from August 25^th when we started this grand adventure together to June 4^th, our last and final moments as a learning grove. 

      I can remember very clearly that first day, as you huffed and puffed while you climbed all the way up to the second floor for the very first time here at Northwest.  That was your first of this year’s joys and challenges.  You were excited to meet your new teacher and reconnect with your friends but you were nervous if you would fit in and if you would be able to do all of the learning that was ahead of you. 

      In the fall you learned strange circley things called number bonds and now many of you can use them with ease.  We met characters like Iris and Walter and Henry and Mudge and learned about the desert and astronauts in space.  In science, we explored many types of rocks and even created our own classroom rock collection.  In November, right before Thanksgiving, we “filled up” a fellow classmate with many treats while reading There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie.  That afternoon WE ROCKED AND WE ROLLED showing Northwest we had the most school pride while we traced our bodies and created an epic paper chain to win the hallway decorating contest!

In the winter, as break approached we celebrated during Rudolph Day when Mrs. Goetz, my mom, came in while we made reindeer antlers, played holiday bingo, opened our glove gifts, and listened to her read The Grinch.  During that season, we met characters like Tara and Tiree and Anansi the Spider.  In math we practiced measuring with cubes and then centimeters.  We started social studies learning how to be good citizens.  We practiced voting in our own classroom voting booth and elected two class presidents.  Along the way, we picked up some new friends who came to Northwest for the very first, (or second time)!

This spring we ventured back into science learning about insects, observing our very own mealworms and waxworms and releasing our classroom butterflies.  In math, you took on the challenge of adding and subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers and became masters of the up and down way!  In reading, we learned about frogs and many other wonders of nature. This spring, we also enjoyed time with our wonderful student teacher Miss McQuate.  As we wrapped up the year, we read The Lemonade Wars with the rest of the school and had our very own classroom war and sold lemonade with our entire second grade team!  Such fun!  We celebrated with South Hills Day and Field Day and now we celebrate the very last day.

My dear class, I hope you enjoyed all of the things we did this year. (This is the best class I have ever seen at using sequence words!)  But I also hope you enjoyed being a part of this class this year.  As your teacher I want to thank you for all that you taught me.  Because each one of you was apart of this class, I learned so many things about teaching and also about life.  I learned how to be calmer, kinder, stronger and more loving.  You impressed me; when I saw one of you bend over to rub the back of a crying friend, when another said that people hurt each other when they are hurt, when you clapped for someone else’s successes, when you fixed your own mistakes, when you chose to do rock, paper, scissors instead of fight with a classmate, when you took on a challenge.  I can’t believe today is the day we say goodbye and I hope each one of you feels like you belonged here in this room and that you mattered because each of those things is true.  Goodbye for now my second graders.  I hope to see you again next year!

                                                      Your teacher,

                                                            Miss Goetz

To the end.

It's a going to bed feeling heavy night.
No, not physically heavy, like I spooned too much ice cream in my mouth kind of night,
But the emotionally heavy night.

The kind when you feel thick with nostalgia,
Ripe with the precious nature of life.

The kind of night where you read a whole hundred pages of a children's novel and kind of lost track of time.
When you haven't spoken to another person for hours.
When you've      s l o w e d.
A deep inflation of breath that has been kept out for too long.

It was a flipping through pictures kind of night,
Sensing, somehow knowing a kind of end is drawing near.
An ending of a life cycle.
Like my second graders' mealworms that have gone from larva, to pupa, to adult.
I've gone to adult.

Clicking back to images,
A rerun in reverse of the moments that have brought you to now.
To this    s l o w   moment.
The moment to catch your breath from all the growth that has taken place.
Growing pains, back to the start of when you thought you knew what you were doing when you accepted the job and trudged 20 or so seven and eight year olds heaving up two flights of stairs.  A class that now brims over with 26  and your insides cringe as you think about how you really had no clue what you were doing.  And wondering....could I ever have anticipated the fullness of this year? And knowing if I had tried I would have been swallowed up all in that moment, glad its a journey of singles steps that turn to leaps and bounds.

And you see yourself smiling in the photographs,
Glimpses and snip-its of a year gone by,
And you swell.
Because for each image their are about a thousand others that are linked to that one.
To the challenge and the struggle that made that one possible.

It's going to bed lost in this maze of life but yet more alerted to it.
To its fragility.
To the fact that you are so small,
But that in fact this is your place,
You fit in this grander scheme as you rerun the pieces, puzzling together what got you to here, what got you to now, and what brings you to the end.

My feeder

Thank you for birds perching on my window sill.  As I sit on a newish bed, in a newish room, in a newish home, in a newish life.  Thank you for the muted drum roll of a seed against brick and the jerky, jittery taps as they skitter onto the small box.  Thank you that this is happening just outside my window, just now.

Its here that I come to sit, in these still, weak moments where my insides seem to crush at all the fear and discomfort of this season of change.  I sometimes seem swallowed up by the massive newness that has me in its clutches.  I'm quickly tempted, brought low, brought to fear.  But then I really take peak, I look beyond the window and there are birds at my feeder, it's all happening right here, and right now.

Dear Mrs. Marzarella

I'm not sure if you remember me. I'm an older version of a seven-year-old that entered your second grade classroom with fresh cut brunette bangs angling around a face of uncertainty. I would love you to know that I have been talking about you for many, many years and I have been wanting to write to you for quite awhile about the impact you have had on my life.  Even now after my graduation from college I can still remember drawing the crab apple tree that grew right outside our window every season and bringing in a cardboard box to symbolize my house in the large classroom map we created of our town.  I can still identify the black capped chickadee, tufted titmouse, junco, morning dove and downey woodpecker when I see them at my feeder.  But most of all I know you loved me and I felt a special connection with you. As I entered the second move of my lifetime in the middle of my third grade year, I was called into your room. I had already left your flock but you handed me a box of notecards with paintings by my favorite artist from the "Artist of the Month" that I learned about in your room. Since that time I moved once more, each time carrying with me this box of Monet stationary enscribed with a personal message from my favorite teacher.  Since then I have wanted to be an artist, an astronaut, a historian and a scientist (and looking through an old box the other day I noticed an entry from fourth grade me describing how I felt like an oddball because all I did was think about science, hysterical). As a young girl and over my lifetime I have struggled with worry like the water stains that have speckled your message on my box but I have always carried a piece of you with me in my heart. Today I took the first steps into my own second grade classroom ready to become Miss Goetz. I am beyond confident and excited to be able to touch the hearts of my students the way you touched mine. Thank you so much Mrs. Marzarella, for when you taught you loved. 

I love you!

Sincerely, 

Miss Sarah Goetz

Former Student and Second Grade Teacher

 

This season is about becoming

As I struggle with the job-search God meets me where I'm at.  It's called "twenty-five" a chapter in the book Bittersweet by Shaun Niequist and these are His whispers to me:

Here are a few thoughts of being twenty-five-ish...

(Advice #1)
You are young enough to believe that anything is possible, and you are old enough to make that belief a reality...
it takes about ten years after college to find the right fit, and anyone who finds it earlier then that is just plain lucky...
That's what this time is for to figure those things out...

(Advice #2)
Now is also the time to get serious about relationships. And "serious" might mean walking away...

(Advice #3 and #4)
Twenty-five is also a great time to start counseling...
the perfect time to get involved in a church you love...
to connect with God in a way that feels authentic and truthful to you...

(Advice #5)
Stop every once in a while...
Ask yourself some good questions like, Am I proud of the life Im living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey? Do the people I'm spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that's keeping me from moving forward?

This season is about becoming...
Now is your time. Become, believe, try.  Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure.  Don't spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are.  Don't get stuck in the past, and don't try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven't yet earned.  Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life's path.

I need to admit I need to hear this. I need to know that even though a month has passed since I graduated (and only a few weeks have past since I finished my last class) that I need to give myself time.  I need to give myself space to become, to risk, to try, to have adventure, to find friends, to find love, to find a church, to find God.  And! It all doesn't have to happen the summer after I graduate.  I have time and space in this season, and though I'll admit to tears and to being grumpy, this is my season, and here's to becoming!

Homemade

Before my stay in Lancaster County I assumed the food would be homemade, but it was not until I actually experienced their daily life first hand did I realize how sustainable their lifestyle truly is.  During my six days with my family I do not remember taking out the kitchen trash one time whereas it occurs almost daily or every other day at my own home.  Instead during my time we filled a small slop bucket multiple times, emptying it into a pile or feeding it to the pigs.  Additionally, one morning I crushed egg shells with a rolling pan to put in flower pots for added nutrients.  Banana peels were also used for the rose bushes.  Most of our meals depended on what was available to the family whether grown in the garden, provided by their married siblings (such as one of the older boys produce or the milk directly from the dairy their son now operate), extras brought home from market, or whipped up from scratch via the bulk products like sugar and flour in the home.

The farm I stayed at also operates as organic. Pesticides were not used meaning that twice during my visit I went through rows of potato plants removing the hard shelled white bugs (once drowning them in cans of chemicals and the other time squashing them with sticks) and their juicy brown young and smushing their nest of eggs between the plant leaves.  Organic also meant that the cows on the farm were grass fed and given all natural feed in their troughs.

My homemade experience is epitomized in the day I made seven gallons of "media tea."

Wednesday May 28, 2014- Making Tea

On Wednesday morning, I was sent out into the garden to pick a variety of tea leaves.  My Amish host mother in Lancaster County wanted to spend the day making tea, particularly for a brother who was going to host the School Committee Meeting of five representatives who reported to Harrisburg earlier that spring.

I set out into the large garden in front of the house, following behind Barbara (the 27 year-old daughter).  We walked along the side row where patches of herbs were growing.  She pointed out the three different types of plants used for the “Meda Tea;” spearmint, peppermint, and woolly.

Spearmint

Woolly

Peppermint
 (see the  reddish stems?)

 During the course of the morning I went out with scissors and cut four dish tubs full of the herbs. Each time I brought in the tubs I would wash the mint in the drinking water, squeezing the leaves to wring out the dirt. Then, I would lay the mint in the dish drying rack to dry off. My host mother then filled 13 quart kettles with water, brought the water to a boil, and then put in the herbs. The mix was two fistfuls consisting mostly of spearmint (the largest of their herb patches) and then some woolly and peppermint to taste.  The timer was set for 3 minutes and would take out the plants.  When this mixture was complete we funneled the tea into glass jars and set them out on the table to cooler before bringing them to the cooler (if the hot tea went directly into the cooler the jars would shatter). We made 7 gallons of tea and then dried the rest up in the attic by placing the stalks on old window screens draped across the laundry drying rack.

Here are some pictures of our process:

Tea drying and jugs ready to be filled

Filling the jugs

The pot of brewed tea

Some completed jugs

"You will be our new sister"

Around 11 o clock this morning the Messiah van pulled onto Zook lane to drop off myself and another Messiah student to our Amish families. The van turned and my stomach twisted with nerves.  But very shortly I was put at ease; I noticed my favorite plants (succulents) about the house, seashells and a large bowl of popcorn. I would be alright!

I shared dinner (Amish lunch!) with the family members at home internally forgetful of the after meal prayer. I helped wih dishes and set out to hoeing and picking off "potatoe bugs" from the potato plants, squashing the eggs that had made the leaves their home. I toured the farm with the youngest daughter who was eager to let me trail behind her all day showinf me the ropes of their life (around the barn and sheds). We wheeled potatoes in our wagon and I set out to help to mash them and prepare a salad. When the entire family was home we settled in for supper and I almost forgot the silent prayer again at the end, thankful for the family's reminders. 

After some more dish washing, I was mystified as the youngest daughter and I climbed through hay bails in the second floor of the barn. Barefooted (as I was all day!) I jumped over the dried stalks in my long skirts, and as we peered out the barn door over the gardens and the misty earth from the passing thunderstorm andi had a brief moment of wonder. I couldn't believe I was there taking to a kind Amish girl just a few inches from myself like I would with Rachel (my younger sister). Surreal!

This evening, we cooked popcorn over the stove and I enjoyed learning that often their Sunday dinner consists of popcorn like at my own house. Although I'm intrigued by the different ways of doing the daily routines, (it's baffling that just a few hours away my family is living their own usual day!) it's still people. People who I laughed with, chatted with, and connected with, going about their life as I would go about mine.

I am so blessed to be here for a week aloud to be a part of the family, and that is how they see me! I am so thankful for the welcoming words of the youngest daughter upon my arrival, "Your our new sister for the week!"