As highlighted in my last blog entry, it’s that time of year when there’s more to do then there is time to do it. No one feels the anxiety of this more than the children in our classrooms, and the children who feel it most intensely are those facing the greatest challenges.

Whether we are a parent of one of these most needy kids or one of their teachers, we’ll begin to see what I call “summer anxiety” bloom earlier in spring in them than in the other children. As when we see a crocus emerging from the snow or the first daffodil, we’re often surprised to see the behavior of our early harbingers of things to come.

Perhaps from a rough start at the beginning of the school year, this child has made significant progress academically and socially, thanks to the combined efforts of teachers, staff, and parents working and communicating together around puzzling academic struggles and the ups and downs of friendship patterns. The child has shown courage in reaching out to a new student who has come into the class and finally seems to have a close classmate.

But not long after spring break, many of these gains, on the surface, seem to disappear. Old patterns of work refusal and anger on the playground surface. When the new friend plays with other classmates, the child refuses to come in from recess.

This is a signal, a red flag if you will. With the keen adaptive sensitivity that so many of our neediest children possess, the child who has benefited so remarkably from the clear structures, supports, and predictability of classroom routines and practices has sensed that the structures are disappearing. Things are beginning to feel different. There’s too much going on. The teacher seems distracted; she doesn’t have as much time to pay attention to the child.

As adults, we may not sense the increased level of our own anxiety in this season as quickly as these children sense it in us. In a way, they’re our barometers, and we’d do well to watch and listen to what their actions are telling us.

Essentially, the message is that in the last weeks of the school year we need more structure, not less. This is the time to tighten up so that we do not lose all that we’ve gained. We need to make sure we can take time during these final weeks to cherish each of the children we’re about to pass on. So, paradoxically, we must go back to beginnings, help children remember all the basic rules of our classroom, of kindness, of academic rigor, of how to be good school citizens in the halls, on the playground, in the cafeteria.

And we must do this “back to basics” work even when it’s too hot and we have to take tests on a day on which we also have softball and we’re trying to arrange the end-of-the year field trip. Our extra effort will benefit all the children. Most especially, it will benefit those children who came to us struggling a little (or a lot) academically or socially, children who do not know who will care for them or even where they will be living when school gets out in June.