Farewell, But Not Goodbye...

The end of the school year is always odd. There’s the incredible relief of having got there, the sense of achievement at a year’s work done. There’s the joy at the approaching holidays, which is just as palpable among the staff members as it is among the students. But it’s an emotionally draining time as well. As the school year enters its final days, I usually find that I struggle to sleep much. Part of this is to do with the choir of blackbirds, sparrows and robins which is a permanent fixture in our garden; a lot of it, though, is to do with my slightly overactive mind playing a fast-forwarded film of everything that’s happened since September, on a loop, reaching its highest intensity around 4-5am most mornings.

As staff and students pack up their bags and leave the classrooms behind for a couple of months, there are always those few who won’t be coming back. Year groups of students move through, complete their five or seven years and embark on new adventures. But for staff members it’s usually an awful lot longer. A lifetime, perhaps. It’s wonderful to see the rejuvenation of recently retired colleagues who have already made the ‘leap’. They always look re-energised, ten years younger and appear to have had an enormous weight lifted from their shoulders. But the leaving itself must be hard, and the more you like your colleagues and your students, the harder it must be. Leaving my first teaching post after four years (as I was moving 100 miles north, getting married, and starting a new post in the school where I still work) was emotional and difficult, even though I knew that wonderful adventures lay ahead. But leaving after ten times as long… maybe by then I’d be so tired and jaded that I wouldn’t be able to summon up any emotion other than relief, but I imagine that I’d be so firmly attached to the school and to my colleagues that I’d feel like the child about to start Primary 1, crying and holding someone’s hand and saying ‘please don’t make me.’ On my first day in Primary 1, I didn’t want my Mum to go away, but the lovely young teacher showed me the books and the water tray and the brightly coloured displays, and I’m told my eyes lit up and I wandered off to explore. Maybe when I’m finally ready to leave school, it’ll be the same: I’ll glimpse the new world of having time to read, take time over my coffee (as opposed to trying to gulp it purely for the caffeine hit), long walks by the sea without any marking or preparation to do when I get home, and all will be well.

Retirements are hard for those left behind. Years ago, a colleague and close friend was leaving my department. I told him how much we would all miss him (and we all still do). ‘No,’ he said, and I can still picture him saying it, sitting at his desk. ‘No. I’ll be replaced. Things will move on. Schools are busy places, with new students all the time. Nobody has time to miss the people who have left, no matter how much they think they will. We all disappear like stones into the ocean, and the waters close over our heads.’ Colleagues can be replaced only in the sense that an advert goes into the paper, people apply for the job, and someone is selected. They take over the classroom and the timetable. They forge their own way of doing things and their own friendships. We come to love their wit, their talents, their hard work. But they don’t replace the actual person who left, nor should we expect them to. I still miss the colleagues who have left my department and the school staff as a whole – probably less for the job they did than for the friendship, the cups of coffee side by side in the staff room, the jokey asides in the corridor, the ironic or mildly despairing texts in the evenings. And it will be the same next year. There will be new teachers in the classrooms which are currently being tidied and cleared out; I will miss the breaktime and lunchtime chats, though, the stories that were told about classes, children, grandchildren, sports fixtures, games of golf and shopping trips.

Life in a school holds the mirror up to life itself. There’s a whole mini society: there are the reprobates, the pillars of society and the majority of us who are somewhere in between. With a community of almost 1000 people, all told, it’s inevitable that we end up sharing happy, sad, frustrating, upsetting, difficult and sometimes joyful times together. We share in each other’s triumphs and disasters. The best classes ‘get’ this, and that’s when being in the classroom is at its best. Staff who have worked together for a long time certainly experience it, and it’s what makes it hard to say goodbye when people leave. The annual end of year staff function sums it up. There are hugs, there’s a lot of laughter, but there are always a few tears as well. There’s a sense of happiness for those who have ‘made it’ through, that shared sense of the amazing achievement of a career well lived. But goodbyes are hard.

It’s not really goodbye though. It’s just farewell. People who leave a school just don’t teach there anymore. They aren’t forgotten: they only think they are. My late father-in-law was a teacher for almost forty years; everywhere he went, long into his retirement, people recognised him and fondly remembered him. I still remember the people who taught me; my Dad still remembers the people who taught him. In school, we wish farewell to the people who are leaving us… but it’s definitely not goodbye. They say the mark of true friendship is when you don’t see someone frequently, but you can simply pick up where you left off when you see them again after some time. The mark of true friendship in a school community is when a staff member leaves, is wished long years of health and happiness, keeps in touch and is remembered with a smile.

The years ahead will bring new challenges, new achievements, more happiness, more sadness and more friends. But we won’t forget the people who have retired. They are part of what has made the school what it is, and they’re part of all our lives.