A Hingham teacher reflects on a school year of banging lockers, remote learning, and resilience

I miss your sleepy morning faces smiling at me as we begin our day. The Pledge of Allegiance, the list of announcements: the Adventure Club, Homework Club, Yearbook, Chorus, the Play, PAW, Ambassador Club, Intramurals. So much activity!

I miss our classroom, our reading rocking chairs, the large collages of past students, the cards, letters, and homemade gifts on my bulletin boards and counters. Our signs: INSPIRE, LIFE IS GOOD, LEARN TO LOVE BY LOVING. Our whiteboards teeming with vocabulary words from “Great Expectations.” Our home away from home.

I miss hearing you talk. I ask you questions. After reading this story, who do you think is the hero? Why? Which characters redeem themselves? What does redemption mean to you? What is this writer suggesting about how people achieve happiness? Maybe you’re in groups, maybe we are all talking as one class, but I hear your voices. How I miss your voices!

And I miss seeing your affection for each other. For the few minutes before class starts, girls sit and chat, some braid each other’s hair. Boys play on their Chromebooks and shoot each other mischievous grins. If a test or quiz is about to happen, you get serious, square up, and drill each other — practice your vocabulary definitions or clarify plot, character, or themes in the novels.

I miss your buzz, your reaching out, volunteering, “I can explain that,” you say to a friend and “I’ll catch her up on what she missed, don’t worry Ms. Cassidy.” I hear you say these things and I know you are all going to do well in life. You step up, take care of each other.

I miss watching you bend into your work, tap your pencil on your desk, stare at your Chromebook screen, and think. And then, suddenly you figure something out. “Oh,” you might even say out loud. “Oh, I know,” and then you start typing.

I miss seeing you digging deep, finding answers, and better yet, creating new questions.

And, I even miss your impish moments when you can’t resist shaking up the remainder of your seltzer water. It explodes, of course. “Sorry, “ you say. “Hmm,” I think. “Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. But, no harm done.” We all have a laugh (or half-laugh) at your antics and then I ban seltzer water from the classroom and it’s back to work.

I love your silliness, your seriousness. Your perching on your heels as you lean forward during discussions, your blurting out questions, your playful teasing, your inventions of words and expressions that only we understand.

I love it all.

We lost all this. We lost our daily world, our emotional landscape. We lost our seven shared hours that defined and shaped our lives.

But, you kids have risen to the challenge. You have produced amazing work, soared! You read and read and you wrote and wrote. You wrote mini-essays for 10 straight weeks! You pushed yourselves, did it all on your own. You became independent thinkers. You grew.

I have never been prouder of any group of kids. I have such respect and admiration for you all.

I can picture where you sit and, even as I write this, I see you in your seat in our classroom. Because to me, that is where you belong. That is where we all belong.

While we may have lost our classroom seats and our seven shared hours, you have gained my heart forever. We have shared a historic challenge and we are still here, stronger than ever.

So go. Take the life you’ve been given and shine.

Make it good! Do great things! I have total faith in you!

Always with gratitude and love for you kids,

Ms. C

Rea Cassidy teaches seventh-grade English at Hingham Middle School. She can be reached at rcassidy@hinghamschools.org.