Paradox—a statement or situation that seems to be contradictory,
but in fact is or may be true.

The end of each school year presents itself to teachers, students, and parents in endless contradictions, stark and glorious contrasts of seeming absurdity and meaning-filled traditions and rites of passage.

With less than a month to go to the final day of school, with Little League and softball dominating daylight savings time’s late lingering light and later bedtimes for families, state data gurus schedule the NCLB granddaddy math, science, and history exams.

Each year in June, as children celebrate and share their academic, musical, artistic, and social accomplishments in their classrooms and schools with classmates, teachers, and parents, documenting the power of a small group of people to model the best principles of our democracy, we simultaneously and deliberately dismantle what we have created only to begin all over again in September.

While over and over again we hear that one of the most significant variables in helping struggling students stay engaged in learning and keeping them in school is a relationship with at least one significant adult, each June we shuffle the deck to ensure that these students will need to go looking for another such anchor in September.

The close of the school year is about endings and beginnings. Elementary school is like a five or six act play; middle school, a three-act; and high school, a four-act. As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts” (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VI).

These annual school cycles teach us different truths about teaching and learning and are embedded in the greater life cycle in a way that offers us the recurring possibility for deep insight into welcoming new beginnings and honoring meaningful conclusions in all aspects of our lives.

My favorite image of the paradox of the end of the school year is the famous mobius strip with its mystery of no beginning and no end; a form so simple any kindergarten child can learn to construct it out of a strip of paper with one twist and a piece of tape … and so complex as to go on forever.