When was the last time you cried at the end of a school year?
I’ve done it about five times as a teacher, each moment with its own context. The first time was because I finished my first school year. I poured everything into that set of kids, despite some of the nonsense I put up with from peers to do so. The second time was because that first set of kids was graduating, and I never helped graduate a set of children before. The third was because I couldn’t finish the school year in the way I wanted to. The fourth was because the kids I had rotated with a group of students from sixth to eighth grade as their math teacher and felt a deep sense of loss and pride at once. The last was because, after a tumultuous year in which one particular administrator tried to bully me out of the profession, my students restored my belief in teaching again. It’s been more than a decade as my cries simply became sighs.
So at the end of season 1 of Abbott Elementary when we see the protagonist Ms. Teagues shed a bittersweet tear after a reassuring message to the audience, it’s something I connected with too deeply.
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