good and bad news

The superintendent announced that Borman Middle School will shut down at the close of this school year and re-open as a K-8 school. Whether we will have the same name is uncertain. Personally, I will not feel hurt if we lose the name. Somehow both Frank Borman and the notion of astronauts seems obsolete, if a little trendy in some strange retro aspect.

On one hand, I feel bad for the staff. A few new teachers will most likely not recieve another teacher contract. Older teachers who still want to teach a single subject will lose their leadership positions and start fresh at another middle school, tainted by the stain of working at "that school that closed down." Teachers will say it just like that, too, with the italics.

For my part, I have very few loyalties to social institutions. I never grow nostalgic when I drive past Mountain Ridge High School. I will be happy to see Trinity Bible Church shut down someday. I rarely put my hand over my heart and say the Pledge of Allegiance. So, I won't really miss Borman.

What I will miss is the community and the people that connect to a social institution. While I don't miss Mountain Ridge, I miss my former friends and teachers. Though I could care less about Trinity Bible Church, I yearn for the community I had in college with the people at TNL. And though I feel almost no true patriotism, I feel grateful when I go to vote and there aren't riots on the street. Thus, I'll miss the community at Borman. I'll miss the staff members who will transfer to other schools. I'll miss the feisty attitude we've developed knowing that the odds are rarely in our favor.

Another part of me is excited. I will get to teach a self-contained eighth grade class next year. I've wanted to teach self-contained for awhile and now I can teach to the best age group. I'm excited about re-organizing service projects, allocating more time for reading and writing, blending together concepts into thematic units.

It's hard, then, to go into the staff lounge. Teachers are bitter and angry. I can't really blame them. People are tense about losing a job (especially the teachers from Michigan, who don't realize that it's easy to get a job at a school in Phoenix) and about being transferred. Some of the veteran's are mourning the loss of the institution and feel a little betrayed after they have been so loyal. I feel as if I have to keep my excitement hidden.